


like fires in the night

by capriciouslouis



Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, And I was still super mad at him when I started writing this, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, I still don't know how I feel about him, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, References to Drugs, So he didn't make the main character cut, Soz, Zayn Malik kind of, he has a cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-06-02 10:30:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 138,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6562777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capriciouslouis/pseuds/capriciouslouis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis comes to university looking for a drama degree and a purpose in life. He gets significantly more than he bargained for.</p><p>He’s got a secret stash of weed under the floorboards, his grades are going to shit and his mates keep getting pissed. There are secret passageways in the wardrobes and he really needs to get Niall a girlfriend. And most importantly, he can’t take his mind off the mysterious law student down the hall…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post
> 
> For Parnia , who was my main motivator and spent a lot of time encouraging me (and listening to me rant about this fic constantly). Happy Birthday! I love you a lot. 
> 
> Also a massive thank you to Cass for helping me when I had writer's block! 
> 
> Find me on tumblr
> 
> Title from Could We Burn, Darling? by Fearless Vampire Killers.

Louis surveyed the sea of boxes strewn across his new dorm room, and sighed.

He was already beginning to regret sending his mother away before she had begun to help him with the unpacking. So far, he’d stubbed two toes, fallen over precisely eight boxes, and still not figured out which box he’d put the vodka in. Jay had suggested that they label the boxes. “Labels are for losers,” Louis had said, and was rapidly beginning to realize that actually, losers were the people who stubbed their toes on boxes and declined help unpacking because they couldn’t stand to see their mother crying. 

She had started tearing up as soon as the car pulled up in the car park outside Louis’ student accommodation. As they began to ferry boxes up and down the stairs, she’d started crying in earnest, and by the time they’d crammed all of the boxes into Louis’ tiny little room, leaving approximately three inches of floor space left to stand on, she’d been bawling into a tissue, leaving little black mascara smudges everywhere she touched, like ink blots.

Louis had patted her on the back. “Chin up, chuck,” he said. That was what she used to say to him when he was a kid, and he’d scraped his knee or broken a favourite toy, or been pushed into the mud by the other kids, who didn’t want to play with him. The phrase had usually been followed by tickling, but Louis didn’t fancy entering into a tickling war with his mother. She was vicious. He wouldn’t stand a chance.

Jay gave him a watery smile, then erupted into fresh sobs. He could make out the odd word - mostly “my baby” and “all grown up” and “going to miss you so much.” His throat started to hurt, his own smile becoming rather strained. He had to take a deep breath before he could speak.

“Nah, you’re just gonna miss having a built in babysitter,” he said lightly. “Still, that’s seven less pairs of socks a week that you’re gonna have to wash, right?”

“You don’t wear socks,” Jay said, mopping her cheeks on a sopping wet tissue.

“Underpants, then. Anyway, Ernie can be the man of the house in my absence. There’s no difference between the two of us; we both take naps in the daytime and refuse to wear shoes. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “I’m not ready for you to go yet. I never taught you how to use the washing machine. You only know how to cook four things and three of them involve beans. You’re going to come back with scurvy and no clean underwear.”

“I’ll be fine!” Louis promised. “Scout’s honour.”

“You got kicked out of the Scouts.”

He waved dismissively. “Details.”

Then he’d hugged her, burying his face in her shoulder, taking in her powdery smell, like washing up liquid and perfume and talcum powder, and a little bit of that playdough smell that always hangs around little kids. He wiped his eyes on her cardigan so that she wouldn’t see that he had gotten a little tearful himself. That would only make things ten times worse.

After that, he’d all but bundled her out of the door before he could become any more morose, and now he was trapped in the middle of a maze of cardboard boxes, trying to figure out where the hell to start.

He began tearing open boxes at random, discovering his entire collection of Marvel movies - his tiny dorm room didn’t have a DVD player…or a TV…but he couldn’t have left them behind - a box of shoes, and all of his battered second hand textbooks before he finally unearthed his bedding. A heroic battle ensued, in which he tussled with the duvet and emerged red-faced and sweaty, his hair standing on end. Louis could wash dishes and make beans on toast with the best of them, but changing a duvet cover had never been his forte. Huffing, he sat down, wishing he’d found the vodka first. Still, sitting on his grotty old Spiderman duvet, which smelt reassuringly like burnt toast and sleep, he felt a little less like an alien in unknown territory.

It was a cheap room, and the reason for this was quite evident. Beneath his many boxes were bare floorboards, which creaked at intermittent intervals as if about to give way. The walls were white-ish; they’d been given a slapdash coat of paint to cover the marks left by the previous owner. Louis could just about see the dark outline of the word ‘FUCK’ in neat calligraphy, shining through the paint.

His bed was about the size of his siblings’ beds at home, and far more rickety. Although he had an en suite bathroom, it was about the size of a public toilet cubicle, and the entire room reeked of sambuca. But what mystified him the most were the wardrobes - one on either side of the room, pushed up against the wall. He could only assume that the intention had originally been for two people to share the room, and then it had become evident that two beds wouldn’t fit in there. But in that case, why hadn’t they removed the extra wardrobe?

Shaking his head, Louis picked up another box and started picking at the tape holding it closed, and then the doors of the right hand wardrobe burst open with a bang. Louis shrieked and almost toppled straight off the bed.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” said a voice.

A guy with blond hair was poking his head out through the open wardrobe doors, grinning. Louis stared, gobsmacked, at this intruder, and then started scrambling for a weapon. He hadn’t packed a baseball bat, so he grabbed one of his smelliest shoes from the open box on the floor and waved it threateningly.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. “And what the fuck are you doing in my wardrobe?”

“Oh, sorry,” the blond said, and he stepped out of the wardrobe and into Louis’ room, immediately stumbling over one of the boxes. “Shit! Fuck! Bit messy in here, isn’t it?” He held out a hand. “Niall. I live next door.”

Louis glared at the proffered hand and didn’t take it. “What do you mean, you live next door?”

Niall gave him a look which suggested that he was questioning Louis’ mental capabilities. “I live…in the room…next to yours,” he said slowly.

“And I suppose that’s your idea of a joke, then, is it? Hiding in a bloke’s wardrobe to scare the shit out of him?”

“That was an accident,” Niall said. “Couldn’t be arsed going the normal way; corridor’s heaving.”

“So you hid in my wardrobe?”

“No, I came through the wardrobe,” Niall said, looking confused.

“All right, Mr. Tumnus, well you can fuck off and find your own wardrobe,” Louis said. “This one’s taken.”

Niall looked uncomprehendingly at him for a few more seconds, then smacked himself in the forehead with the flat of his hand. Louis stared. He hadn’t realized that people actually did that in real life.

“No one’s told you, have they?”

“Told me what?”

“Come on,” said Niall. “I’ll show you.”

Louis looked warily at him. “Show me what?”

“S'better if I show you.” Niall held his hand out. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Into the wardrobe.”

Louis raised an eyebrow. “No offense, mate, but are you high?”

“Not yet, but give it time. Are you coming or what?” Niall already had one foot in the wardrobe.

“That’s my wardrobe!”

“I know this sounds crazy, but humour me, okay?”

Louis sighed. Clearly the guy wasn’t going to quit pestering him until he played along. He stepped into the wardrobe.

The boards groaned as he stepped in, and Niall pulled the door closed behind them.

"Well, this is cosy,” Louis said sarcastically.

Niall poked him. “Keep going.”

Louis huffed, but took another step forwards. He stretched one arm out in front of him like he really was looking for Narnia, and was surprised to find that the wardrobe was far deeper than it looked. The tips of his fingers grazed empty air. Frowning, he took another step. Niall’s breath was hot on the back of his neck.

Another step. Coat-hangers tickled the top of his head.

“Big wardrobe, this, innit?” he said.

Niall sighed impatiently. “Jesus, we’ll be here all day. Come here.”

He gave Louis an almighty shove.

Yelping, Louis pitched forwards, throwing his hands out in front of him to keep his face from ploughing into the back of the wardrobe, but when his hands finally slammed into something solid, it collapsed and he fell straight through, collapsing into a heap on the floor.

Groaning, Louis lifted his head. He’d fallen into a room that looked like his own, but more lived-in. There was a tattered Derby football poster over the bed, which looked like it had already been slept in, and the shelf was crammed with textbooks. Clothes were strewn across the floor.

“Well,” said Niall. “That was dramatic.”

He hopped neatly over Louis and went to sit on the bed. Louis pushed himself upright and stared at Niall.

“What just happened?”

Niall patted the space beside him on the bed.

After a moment’s consideration, Louis went to sit beside him. Then, Niall pried up one of the floorboards with his toe, reached in and pulled out a three-quarter full bottle of vodka. He offered it to Louis, who took a swig straight from the bottle. It was looking like that kind of day.

“When they built this place,” Niall said, taking the bottle back and downing a large mouthful, “they did it on the cheap. Like, really cheap. Planned on fitting two students to a room, and everything. When they installed the wardrobes, they did as shit of a job as they had with everything else, and made the back of the wardrobes just a thin bit of plasterboard.” He smacked his lips impressively. “Didn’t take long for the students to notice. Then someone had the bright idea of cutting through the plasterboard. Every single wardrobe in the building has a hole in the back which leads to the opposing wardrobe in the next room. They’re all connected. Hence, you can get from one end of the building to the other without ever setting foot outside of the dorm rooms.”

“What’s the point in that?”

“Easy,” said Niall. “You can get away with anything. Drugs. Parties. Whatever. As soon as someone knocks on the door, you run like fuck through the wardrobe and make a quick getaway out of the doorway at the other end. No one who’s lived in this building has ever been successfully arrested whilst they were inside of it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Louis. “Hasn’t anyone from the university boarded it up?”

Niall shrugged. “I think they tried, a couple of years back, but people just broke it down again. Anyway, it’s not like we go round screaming about it; no one wants it to get boarded up. If anyone starts sniffing around, we just quiet things down for a couple of weeks.” He glanced at Louis. “You okay? You look kind of peaky.”

“Yeah,” Louis said, “well, having a stranger leap out of your wardrobe will do that to you.”

“I know what’ll perk you up,” said Niall, and he slid onto the floor and wriggled underneath the bed.

There was some scratching, and then he emerged holding a bulging plastic bag full of -

“Where the fuck did you get all that weed?” demanded Louis.

Niall shrugged modestly. “I know a guy. Want some?”

Louis gave him a scathing look, like he didn’t consider that question even worth asking aloud, and held out his hand for a spliff.

“How many floorboards have you torn up to hide your shit under?”

Sticking his tongue out in concentration as he rolled, Niall said, “None. Half the boards are coming up, anyway; you could hide a body under there. You just feel your way about until you get a loose one. I know it seems a bit dramatic, but the trouble with everyone being able to get into each other’s rooms is that it’s easy to nick stuff. Most people won’t; no point, when you could just search all their rooms until you find the culprit and steal it back anyway, but…” He lit up and clamped the blunt between his teeth. “Better safe than sorry.”

Not long after, when they were both pleasantly buzzed, time drifting by, thick and slow like melted chocolate, Niall said, “Having a party later.”

“Yeah?” Louis asked. They’d ended up lying down; his head was resting on Niall’s belly, which was surprisingly comfortable.

“Yeah. Me and this guy Liam, down the hall. Everyone’s invited. You in?”

“Yeah,” said Louis, after a long pause. “I’m in.”

~*~

The world pitched and rolled beneath his feet like a ship, even when he stood still. Everything was dark around the edges and fuzzy in the middle, and his whole body felt like the thick sensation that comes before pins and needles, where everything seems to be wrapped in cotton wool. The music was too loud, he could smell sick and vodka and weed and sweat, the floor was sticky, and his fringe was flopping in his eyes.

This was why he’d come to university. For secret passages in the dorm rooms, and getting too high to move, and living, and then forgetting about it. The best nights out, as far as Louis were concerned, were the ones he could hardly remember, because he could have done anything. He could have been anyone. He was the unreliable narrator of his own story; he was the protagonist, and the villain, and when he was old and grey, he could spin wild tales about his university days and not feel bad about it, because for all he knew, they could have really happened. His uni days would be lost in a fog of tequila and bad memories, and that would keep them gold forever - like old photographs, coated in a layer of dust. He could blow off the dust if he tried hard enough, but why would he? When the dust caught the light, it turned the photographs gold.

He toppled into the chair of their communal kitchen, beside Niall and Liam, who were having an in-depth discussion about whether Batman or Iron Man would win in a fight. Louis watched them with interest, breathing in the smoke from their cigarettes. Liam was pretty, with large, dark eyes and an excellent jawline, and Niall was all teeth and contagious smiles and a cackling laugh that warmed Louis’ belly almost as much as the vodka. Louis lolled back in his chair, his eyes rolling a little, and strained his ears over the music to listen to their conversation.

“Batman would win,” insisted Liam.

“Nah,” said Niall. “Iron Man. Iron Man’s suit has like, guns and stuff. And he can fly. Batman can’t fly.”

“But Batman can climb walls. And summon the bats.”

“Iron Man could just shoot the bats,” Niall said. “With his guns.”

“But Batman has a secret identity, and Iron Man blew his secret identity _on purpose_ in the _first movie_.”

“So?” said Louis. “His secret identity doesn’t make him more powerful than Iron Man.”

Liam gave him a disparaging look. “I was rooting for you, Louis.”

“Anyway,” Louis continued, “Iron Man would win because he’s smarter than Batman. Sure, Batman has the cool suit, but if it breaks, he’s fucked. He has to get someone else to fix it for him. Iron Man can fix it himself. Iron Man is smart and rich.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “but…but… Christian Bale is hotter than Robert Downey Jr.”

“Objection!” said Niall. “Irrelevant. Anyway, Robert Downey Jr is way hotter.”

“Robert Downey Junior is hotter,” said Louis, “but Christian Bale has a sexier voice.”

There was a considerable pause. After a while, Niall dipped his head in acquiescence.

“I thought you guys were straight,” said Louis, picking up someone’s abandoned cup from the table and taking a long pull of vodka and lemonade through a straw.

“I think I might be bi for Batman,” said Liam.

Niall shrugged. “Don’t need to be gay to appreciate an attractive man, you know what I’m saying? Hey, that’s mine!” He swiped the cup out of Louis’ hand and took a long swallow.

“Share and share alike, you uncharitable bastard,” said Louis, as a blonde girl lurched past their table with her hand clamped over her mouth. He peered after her. “Hey! Are you okay?”

“She’s just drunk, leave her be,” said Liam.

Shaking his head, Louis got up to follow, and Niall and Liam decided to accompany him, like two drunken shadows. They shambled after her, just in time to see her lurch into Liam’s room, where the door had been propped open.

Two guys Louis didn’t recognize appeared to be snorting coke off Liam’s bedside table, whilst a third patted it onto his gums. A little group of girls were sat cross-legged on his bed, playing cards, one of them laughing hysterically so that her drink slopped onto the duvet. He had a Batman duvet cover - Louis was relieved that he wasn’t the only one to have brought his grimy superhero duvet to university with him.

The blonde girl was bent over the toilet, retching, her hair flopping over her face. She attempted to tuck it behind her ears, then heaved again. Louis approached with caution, and when he was close enough to see chunks of something pink on the side of her mouth, he decided that was quite close enough. The girl had closed her eyes and was resting her cheek against the toilet seat; he touched her lightly on the shoulder.

“You okay there, babe?”

Her eyes opened with a flutter; they were bright, shocking blue. “Huh?” she said thickly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I threw up.”

She had a pretty heavy accent; Geordie, he thought. “You gonna puke again?”

She shrugged, and then twitched, turning her face back into the toilet bowl.

“You need me to hold your hair, or something?”

The girl turned to look at him, and he was alarmed to see that her eyes were swimming with tears. Louis hastily backed away, hands held up.

“I’m sorry, I just - ”

“ _Thank you_ ,” she said tearfully. “That’s so nice. You’re so _nice_ to me.”

“Oh,” said Louis. “Er - ”

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a brilliant smile, tears still dripping down her cheeks.

After a moment of floundering, Louis passed her a wad of toilet paper. The girl gave him a weak smile and wiped at the sick on her cheek.

“Perrie Edwards,” she said.

“Louis Tomlinson. I’d shake your hand, but, er…”

Perrie blinked down at her hand, and then snorted softly. It was sticky with booze, and she appeared to have blood underneath her fingernails - although Louis was more concerned with the death grip that that hand had had on Liam’s toilet seat. In this kind of establishment he didn’t trust the toilet seats to be free of either germs or cocaine residue and he wasn’t sure Perrie hadn’t missed when vomiting into the toilet.

“Some other time,” she said, waving him away, as she slumped back over the toilet seat.

Louis backed out of the tiny bathroom, and turned to find that Liam and Niall were now lolling on Liam’s bed as well, crammed on beside the three girls. Liam was attempting to do some kind of card trick, but it didn’t seem to be going too well.

“Is this your card?” he asked, flourishing it in front of one girl’s face.

She frowned at it, struggling to focus, and eventually caught his wrist to hold it still. “No,” she said.

Liam’s face fell.

“Ooh!” said her friend, scrabbling at Liam’s thigh. “I found it! You’re sitting on it!”

Liam accepted the card with a doleful look. “Thanks, Leigh-Anne,” he said.

She lurched forwards and kissed him on the cheek, lipstick smearing down his cheekbone in a thick smear, like a child’s finger-painting. Liam’s face lit up with excitement.

Louis rolled his eyes, and pushed past the idiots doing cocaine to peer out through the window. Outside, the night was pitch black, with gauzy curtains of mist pulling in around the edges, turning the street-lights into blurs of orange like pumpkin lanterns. Louis pressed his sweaty forehead against the window pane and closed his eyes, listening. He heard the snorty sounds of the coke-heads still doing lines; the high-pitched laughter of the girls on the bed, accompanied by Niall’s throaty cackle. If he strained his ears, listening past the angry thud of the music, he could still hear Perrie dry-heaving over the loo, and the faraway sound of sirens, drifting on the air like the smell of salt on a sea breeze.

The glass was cool against his head, like pressing his skin against a sheet of ice, and he pressed his whole hand against it, leaving a hot, smeary handprint.

Louis frowned. The sirens were getting louder - obnoxiously loud, in fact, drawing up close like a toddler screeching in his ear. His eyes didn’t want to open, but when he managed it, he peered past the fog his breath had made on the window, and saw smudges of red and blue drifting down below, flashing on and off. Louis scrubbed at the window with his sleeve and pressed his forehead so hard against it that it hurt, and when he managed to focus, he spotted the two cops getting out of the police car.

“Fuck,” said Louis.

“What’s up?” asked Niall.

“Police,” Louis said. He raised his voice. “POLICE! EVERYBODY SHIFT! MOVE YOUR ARSES!”

There was no response, so he left the room and started banging on doors; he stormed back into the kitchen, yelling “police!” until someone had the sense to turn off the music. Without it, the whole place sounded hollow, filled with cries of confusion and complaints and the sound of running water as someone chugged straight from the tap. Louis slammed his palm down on the light-switch and everyone screamed as the room was plunged into darkness.

“The cops are on their way up,” he said. “Get rid of anything illegal.”

Then he swept back into Liam’s room. The three girls had vanished, and Niall was hopping up and down in anguish, brandishing the enormous bags of weed he’d stuffed into his pockets.

“Shit! What am I gonna do with all of this?”

“All of that?” Liam yelled. “What about all of this?” He pointed a finger at the lines of coke on his bedside table, and the bumbling coke-heads with crusty white stuff around their nostrils, like they’d been sniffing talcum powder. “How the hell am I gonna get rid of all that?”

Perrie lurched out of the bathroom, wiping her mouth on her arm, and looking determined. “Wait,” she said, and staggered into Liam’s wardrobe.

She returned a minute or two later, clutching a little hand-held vacuum cleaner. Switching it on, she began hoovering up the cocaine, ignoring the howls of protest coming from the boys who had been snorting it.

“Brilliant!” said Liam. “Now what do we do about the weed?”

“Leave that to me,” said Louis, already yanking it out of Niall’s pockets, piling it up in his arms. “I’m the least drunk out of all of you. Try and sober up, think of a good way to fob off the police.”

“Hide it in the room at the end,” Niall said, “there’s no one in there, and that way they won’t find it on you; if they find it in an empty room, nobody gets arrested. Go!”

He shoved Louis into the wardrobe.

Running through a secret passageway whilst heavily laden with weed was nowhere near as cool as Louis had expected. For a start, he had to stop to try and close all the wardrobe doors behind him, to make sure he wasn’t making it obvious where he’d gone - and closing doors from the inside was no easy feat, especially with his hands full. Secondly, not all of the wardrobes were empty.

The first obstacle he came to was when he tripped over an extensive shoe collection that someone had neatly lined up on the bottom of one wardrobe. He almost twisted his ankle when he got tangled up with a pair of strappy pink heels; in the next room, someone had a fondness for oversized sweaters, and several of them fell on his head. Someone else had left the wardrobe blissfully empty, but had left their dirty laundry all over the floor of their room, which he fell over. When he got to his own room, he had to clamber over all the cardboard boxes that he still hadn’t finished unpacking, swearing with vitriol. The sirens had stopped, but he still felt like the cops were at his heels, following him through the wardrobes.

He tripped over someone’s bed, which they’d moved into the centre of the room, climbed into their wardrobe, got his hair tangled in the coathangers and then fell with a yelp of pain into the next room, scaring the shit out of a dark-haired guy who was sat on his bed, painting his nails.

Groaning, Louis lifted his head, hoping that falling melodramatically into other people’s rooms wasn’t going to become a recurring theme. He’d dropped the weed everywhere, so he immediately started gathering it up, already babbling apologies.

“Sorry, mate, didn’t realize there was anyone in here, I’ll get out of your hair - ”

“Who are you? How did you get in?”

Louis glanced across and then paused in his scrabbling. The guy on the bed had dark curly hair that fell to his shoulders, and green eyes that were scorching a hole in the top of Louis’ head. He was still holding a bottle of nail polish, with the brush hanging forgotten in mid-air, dripping varnish onto the duvet.

He was gorgeous, Louis thought. And the whole room smelt divine, like sherbet and cinnamon, and glitter. Biting his lip, he looked the stranger up and down - long legs, tight jeans, a sheer shirt hinting at tattoos hidden beneath - and then realized that he was on the run from the police with a shit-tonne of weed and probably didn’t have time to stop and ogle strangers with fantastic hair.

“Just passing through,” Louis said cheerily, grabbing the last bag of weed, “don’t mind me - ”

Rushing across the room, he yanked open the next wardrobe and went to step through it, but his foot collided with solid wall and he swore, staggering back. Holding one hand out in front of him, he shoved aside the clothes hanging neatly from the rail - all soft fabrics, sheer gauze or silk or well-worn denim - groped for the hole in the plasterboard that surely must be there, but found only solid concrete, cold and a little damp. Bewildered, Louis pushed on the concrete, but it didn’t give way.

He backed out of the wardrobe, almost walking into the stranger, who was standing over him with his hands on his hips, his nails glistening bloody red.

“What are you doing in my room? And how did you get in?”

“What room is this?” Louis demanded. “Is this the last one? The room on the end, by the stairs?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re not supposed to be in here! This room was supposed to be empty!”

“Yeah, well, it was kind of a last-minute thing,” the guy said stiffly. “I was in Clearing. Didn’t get much choice when it came to picking a room. This was all they had left that wasn’t completely communal.”

Louis frowned. “Clearing? Isn’t that - ”

“The last resort? Yeah, yeah, don’t rub it in,” the guy said. “How did you get into my room?”

“Secret passageways through the wardrobes,” Louis said. “Listen, mate, I’m sorry for dropping in on you like this, but I need someplace to hide my weed.”

“It seems like you’ve had enough weed already.”

“Look, it sounds bonkers, but the wardrobes are all connected, you can get into the next room through the wardrobe. I don’t have time to explain - do you mind if I stash this in here somewhere? I owe you one - I’ll let you have an eighth - ”

“No,” the guy said, folding his arms.

Louis blinked. “Oh. Okay then. Two eighths?”

“No,” he repeated. “You’re not hiding that in here.”

“Why not?”

“Listen, _mate_ ,” the guy said, “I’m doing a law degree, which means that if I get a criminal record, I’m fucked. My career is fucked, my degree is fucked, my life is fucked. I barely got in here as it is. I’m not risking all that to hide your fucking weed. I don’t even know you!”

“Well what am I supposed to do with it, then?” Louis demanded.

Shrugging, the guy sat down on his bed. “Not my problem.”

Louis pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. Trust him to stumble in on the most sanctimonious prick in the entire dormitory. Weren’t lawyers supposed to be devious and unscrupulous? Typical.

It didn’t help that the guy was so hot, either. It was distracting. How was Louis supposed to convince him to hide four bags of weed underneath his bed when all he wanted to do was sniff his hair and ask him on a date?

“What’s your name?” he asked, as a halfway point between the two.

“Harry,” the stranger said.

“I’m Louis.” He smiled.

That smile had worked wonders when he was a kid, charming old ladies into giving him boiled sweets, getting him out of trouble with the teachers, convincing his mum to let him have mates over for tea or to make cake when it wasn’t his birthday. Even once he’d gotten older, he found that it worked well on irate managers, teenage girls, and occasionally the police. Harry, however, did not look impressed.

“Nice to meet you, Louis. I’m still not hiding your weed.”

Louis pretended to droop. “Damn. You’ve seen through my cunning plan.” He looked Harry in the eye. “Listen, you’ve made your point, you don’t want me and my filthy weed in here - so can I at least use your toilet to flush it down?”

Harry looked suspiciously at him. His lips were flushed, like he’d just been kissing someone.

“All right,” he said.

“You’re a star!” Louis said, and he darted forwards to kiss Harry on the cheek, just because he could.

He had the satisfaction of seeing Harry’s face pinken in the bathroom mirror, and the slightly stunned look on his face as he pressed his fingertips to the spot Louis had kissed, before the bathroom door swung shut, and Louis started looking frantically around.

Now where the _fuck_ was he going to hide all of this weed?

Harry’s bathroom was just as tiny as everyone else’s, but with an assortment of Lush containers lined up in neat rows on the windowsill. It was what Louis imagined his oldest sister’s dream private bathroom would look like, if she ever had the chance to obtain one. The whole room smelt a little like bubblegum, and there was a smudge of glitter on the sink.

Louis tried cramming the weed behind the toilet cistern, but there was no room. He lifted the lid off the water tank, looked into the dank brown water and decided he would rather die than drop some perfectly good weed in there, where anything could happen to it - beside which, if it blocked up the mechanisms and stopped the toilet from flushing properly, he didn’t want to imagine the face of the plumber Harry called out to fix it, when he was pulling fistfuls of weed out of the water tank.

That was when he remembered Niall’s advice, and started stamping around the bathroom, looking for a loose board.

It took several minutes - Harry was going to start getting suspicious - but then his foot almost went straight through the floor, and he had found the dodgy board, right in the middle of the room. Louis wrenched at it with his fingernails, the ragged edges of the wood tearing at his fingers, and then it came up with a crack, and he was cramming the weed into the little space beneath. He thought at first that it wouldn’t fit, but after a lot of panting and shoving, he managed to slot the board back into place, and ran his fingers over it to make sure that it wasn’t uneven compared to the rest of the floor. He tested it with his foot to make sure that it wouldn’t come up the moment someone stepped on it, and when he was satisfied, he stood up and flushed the toilet with a triumphant nod.

When he emerged, Harry was scrubbing at the blotches of nail varnish on his duvet.

“You wanna be a bit more gentle with that,” said Louis. “If you keep scrubbing it, you’re just going to spread all the polish around.”

Harry looked up, a little pink in the face, and huffed. “Sound advice, from the person who made me spill it.”

“I am sorry about that. I honestly thought the room was empty. We were having a party down the hall, why didn’t you come? Everyone was invited.”

“Not really my thing,” Harry said, without looking at him.

“With a name like Harry Styles, you should be biting the heads off bats and smashing guitars up, not hiding away in your room painting your nails.”

Harry’s head jerked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve got a really rock-star name. Are you really going to waste it on a law degree?”

Harry shrugged, his shoulders loosening slightly. “Law pays better. What are you studying, breaking and entering?”

Louis laughed. “Drama.”

“Makes sense,” Harry said, dabbing at the stain on the duvet. He gave a heavy sigh. “This is never going to come out, you know.”

“Of course it will. Bung a bit of rubbing alcohol on it and it’ll be right as rain, you’ll see. Maybe a bit of Vanish. I have sisters,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Funnily enough, I don’t have a whole lot of rubbing alcohol lying around at the moment.”

“I’m sure I could hook you up,” Louis said.

“I’m sure,” Harry said dryly.

Louis continued to hover awkwardly in the middle of the room, whilst Harry focused on the stain. Things had gone strangely quiet; the music that had been drifting down the hallway had been switched off, and there were no longer sirens caterwauling outside. Louis rubbed the back of his neck.

“So,” he said.

Harry looked up, then away again, as if he hadn’t meant to do it.

“I guess I’ll get going,” said Louis. “Cops should be gone soon.”

“Maybe go hang around outside for a bit,” said Harry. “You smell like a cannabis factory.”

“Ooh, you flirt,” Louis said.

This time, Harry didn’t crack a smile. Louis wondered if he’d gone too far. Was it the kiss? He licked his lips.

“Well, we should be having another party soon. You should come. Get to know everyone. They’re not all tossers like me, I promise.”

“Maybe,” Harry said. It sounded like a ‘no’.

“Okay… Night, then.”

“Night,” said Harry, still fixated on the duvet.

Louis rested his hand on the doorknob, and cast one last look at where Harry sat hunched over the bed, drawing in on himself like a black hole, head bowed. He felt a little twinge of hurt like a splinter, which he forced himself to ignore as he slipped out into the doorway and closed the door behind him.

 _What a strange bloke_ , he thought with bewilderment. He hadn’t seemed able to decide whether to be cool and standoffish, or friendly. Maybe he was closeted, Louis thought. That was why he’d clammed up so hard when Louis had kissed him. He didn’t think he was straight. A straight guy would have rejected him straight away, not blushed when Louis pressed his lips against his cheek. Not touched the spot with something bordering on reverence, as if it tingled.

Louis shook his head and started heading back towards the kitchen. He needed another drink.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any opinions expressed by the characters are the opinions of the characters and not the author, I don’t seek to offend anyone. 
> 
> Trigger warning for the Q slur, it is used by a gay character but in a way that could be seen as derogatory.

The next morning, Louis was in the kitchen, staring at an enormous glass of water and deliberating over whether to drink it, or drown himself in it, when Harry came through the doorway, dressed all in black. Hesitating, he lingered for a moment before licking his lips and entering, and then beginning to forage in the cupboard.

Louis stared at him, not even trying to hide it. The drunken haze was beginning to dissipate, and he was surprised to find that Harry was just as pretty as he had been when Louis was drunk - if not more so. His drunken memory of Harry was smeary round the edges, like a blurry photograph. Today, Louis could see him so much more clearly. Sharp bones, slender legs. His clothes were tight and clung to him, emphasizing every angle and curve. With his long hair swept off his face, Louis had a much clearer view of his eyes, and thought that they seemed wary.

Turning away, Harry made himself a bowl of cornflakes and stood over the sink to eat them. At that point, looking at Harry’s crisp dark clothes, Louis became painfully aware of the state he was in - hair a little lank, clothes sticky with spilt drinks, and smelling a little like onions from where he’d sweated into them the night before. And his breath - God, Harry could probably smell it from the other side of the kitchen. His mouth tasted like a drain. Louis took a nervous sip of his water, the glass clinking against his teeth, and looked down at the table. Someone had started a game of noughts and crosses on the tabletop, drawn in permanent marker. The person playing crosses would have won. Absentmindedly, Louis spat on his finger and started rubbing at the doodle, trying to get it off. The ink stayed resolutely put.

“You’re up early,” said Harry.

Startled, Louis looked up. He glanced foolishly around the kitchen, but no, Harry was definitely speaking to him.

“I haven’t been to sleep yet,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

“Work,” said Harry. “I work at Lush.”

That explained why his bathroom had smelled so sweet, with the clusters of bottles on the windowsill. “You get a good discount?”

“Fifty percent.”

Louis whistled. “I know who I’m sending to get all my sisters’ Christmas presents this year.”

Harry smiled and started to say something else, then they both jumped as Niall lurched into the kitchen, tripping over a stack of cheap plastic cups someone had piled up on the floor. Slipping on the dribbles of alcohol that spilt out of them, he swore viciously, caught at the worktop, and managed to right himself just before he cracked his head on the side.

“Fuck!”

“This is becoming a habit with you,” commented Louis, pulling out a chair for him. “Come sit down, you clumsy bastard, before you do yourself a permanent injury.”

“I think my brain is coming out my ears,” Niall said. “My head feels all spongy, like…like a wet cake. Bits coming off it, like. Can you look?” He scraped back his hair and shoved his ear in Louis’ face.

“All I see is earwax,” said Louis. “And you stink, by the way.”

“That,” declared Niall, “is the stench of life.” All of a sudden, he spotted Harry still hovering by the sink, clutching his bowl of cornflakes. “Ey up. Who’s this?”

“This is Harry. He lives in the room on the end.”

“Oh. Oh!” Niall looked him up and down. “We thought it was empty. So you sorted out the weed, then?” he asked, looking at Louis.

“I took care of it,” Louis said, with a slightly strained smile, silently begging Niall not to ask any more questions.

“Nice, nice. Good one. Hey, we’re having another little get-together tonight - nothing wild, not like last night. You should have come, man, it was brilliant. Anyway, we’re just gonna have a few drinks, play a few card games, play a few drinking games…just a few of us. You should come.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Harry, “I’ll think about it.”

Niall gave him a curious look, then shrugged and crossed over to the fridge, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. He sat back down beside Louis, smacking his lips.

“You know, I really owe you one, man. You really saved our arses with that weed.”

Abruptly pouring the rest of his cornflakes down the sink, Harry started washing out the bowl. “Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, but it’s too risky, with me doing a law degree. I’m glad you understand. I couldn’t get caught with something like that on me, it’d ruin my life, you know what I mean?”

Niall frowned. Louis was gesturing frantically with his eyebrows, trying to get him to shut up, but the blond seemed oblivious. In desperation, Louis tried to kick him, but missed and kicked the table leg instead. The whole table jerked, skidding across the floor with an unpleasant scrape. Pain shot through Louis’ toe and up his ankle, and his eyes watered.

“So…where did you hide the weed?” asked Niall, turning to look at Louis.

“He flushed it,” said Harry, leaving his bowl on the side, next to a collection of half-empty bottles. “Better than getting caught with it on him, right?”

He looked across at Niall, who had turned a nasty shade of grey and was looking murderously at Louis.

“Er,” Harry said hastily, “anyway, I’d better - um - work, so - ”

He practically ran out through the door, skidding on a sticky patch on the floor, and the door shut behind him just as Niall yelled “You flushed _a hundred and fifty quid’s worth_ of weed down the _fucking_ toilet?”

“No!” Louis said. “Jesus, keep your voice down! I told him I flushed it, hid it underneath his floorboards when he wasn’t looking.”

“Oh,” said Niall, deflating slightly. “I was gonna say. Fuck me.” He glanced at the doorway. “Bit strange, him, isn’t he? Anti-social. Bit twitchy.”

“Couldn’t seem to make up his mind about me last night,” said Louis. “Blowing hot and cold every ten seconds. Still, I think I might have come on a bit strong.”

Niall wrinkled his nose. “You fancy _him_? Really?”

“He’s alright,” Louis said carelessly, like he hadn’t been thinking about Harry near constantly since tumbling into his room the night before. “What about this party, then?”

“It’s not a major thing. Just you, me, Liam, and Perrie and her mates, maybe a few others. But nothing out of hand like last night. I reckon we’ll be cleaning up this shit for a month.”

Louis looked around the room. It looked as though the entire flat was a dolls’ house and a giant child had picked it up and shaken it around, sending everything flying. There were empty bottles, clothes on the floor, broken glass, and a deck of cards lying in a heap by the fridge, someone had drawn a smiley face on the oven door with what appeared to be shaving cream, and there were several ominous stains on the tiles in various putrid colours: poison green; pustule red; bruise purple, from god knows what drinks people had spilt. Someone had filled a glass full of gummy bears and appeared to have tried to drown them in clear liquid, and by the smell of it, there was sick somewhere that needed cleaning up. Louis sighed.

“It seemed a bit more…glamorous last night,” he admitted. “Now I just feel like I’m living in filth.”

“We _are_ living in filth,” said Niall, stretching, and then pushing his chair away from the table with a scrape that made Louis wince. “Filth and sin. I’m going for a nap, okay? Don’t wake me up until six-ish, unless there’s a fire.”

“Okay,” said Louis. “Hey, listen, do you think I should go back for the weed now, while he’s out?”

“Best not. The cops knew we had weed in there, they must have been mad as hell when they couldn’t find it. I expect they’ll be paying us a few surprise visits before the week is out; that’s why we’re toning things down a bit tonight. The weed stays where it is. It’s not as if he’ll know the difference.”

“I suppose, but what if - ”

“Louis,” Niall interrupted, “no one is going to suspect that guy. He has about as much personality as a toothpick. If you were a police officer, would you really search that guy’s room for weed? He eats cornflakes over the sink.”

Louis hesitated, trying to come up with a good argument, then closed his mouth.

“Stop worrying,” said Niall. “As soon as all of this blows over, we’ll get the weed back and get so high that we can’t move. Until then, just don’t think about it.”

“Right,” said Louis.

Just don’t think about the five or six bags of weed stuffed underneath the floorboards of one of the hottest men Louis had ever clapped eyes on. Right.

Louis buried his face in his hands.

~*~

 

“I have an idea,” said Perrie. “Let’s play ‘Never Have I Ever’.”

For almost an hour, they’d been crammed into Louis’ room, squabbling over what game to play. He still hadn’t unpacked the majority of his boxes, so Perrie and Jade were sat on two of the largest boxes, Leigh-Anne was perched on Louis’ rickety desk, Jesy was lolling back in a wonky office chair that had come with the room, slowly spinning herself around with her foot, blowing smoke rings, whilst Louis cast occasional glances at the smoke alarm dangling from the ceiling above her head - not because he was worried about setting it off, but because it was hanging by a single wire and looked like it might fall on her head at any second. Niall and Liam and Louis were all sat on his spiderman duvet, passing cans of beer between them, and all pretending that the taste didn’t make them shudder.

They still hadn’t chosen a game. Louis had suggested Bullshit, but started cheating ten minutes in, so that everyone refused to play with him again. Jesy suggested Cards Against Humanity, then realized she’d left her deck at home. Niall tried to teach them all to play Irish Snap, and confused them all - and himself - so much that they’d had to open more drinks just to subdue the headaches that ensued.

The girls cheered their approval of Perrie’s idea, but Liam looked confused.

“What’s ‘Never Have I Ever’?”

“You’ve never played ‘Never Have I Ever’?” Louis scoffed. “Did you never have a childhood?”

“Basically,” said Perrie, “you go round in a circle, and take it in turns to say ‘Never have I ever’, and then you say something, and everyone who’s done it drinks, and everyone who hasn’t, doesn’t drink. So like…never have I ever played Never Have I Ever.”

The girls all drank. So did Louis.

“So how do you know who wins?”

“Nobody wins,” said Jesy. “It’s just a great way to get pissed, and to learn everyone’s dirty secrets.”

“Sounds like truth or dare, but without the dares,” said Niall.

“That’s basically the gist of it. Are you in?”

“I’m always in. Payno?”

“Did you just call me ‘Payno’?” asked Liam, with mild disgust.

“Sorry. Payno-in-the-arso. Are you in?”

“Sure, whatever,” said Liam. “Who’s going first?”

“Me!” said Louis. “Never have I ever done anal!”

He downed his drink. Niall, who had been swallowing a mouthful of beer when Louis spoke, spat it everywhere, showering them all in amber liquid. He spluttered, choking on the beer as rivulets of it dripped down his chin. Perrie and Jade shrieked, almost falling off the boxes in their haste to get away, whilst Jesy roared with laughter. Liam was staring at Louis, his eyes popping, whilst Louis basked in the reaction he had caused and thumped Niall hard on the back.

“Jesus,” said Niall, once his airway was relatively clear. “You don’t beat about the bush, do you?”

“Niall, do I look like a subtle man?”

“I didn’t realize this was a sex game.”

“Of course it’s a sex game, Niall, otherwise how boring would that be? _Never have I ever played scrabble._ Riveting.”

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to be able to participate much,” said Niall, leaning back against the wall. “Or at all.”

“It won’t all be outrageous, wild sex stories,” Louis promised. “Come on, girls, your turn!”

“Never have I ever been fingered,” Perrie said, edging back, as if worried that Niall might spit all over her again.

The girls all drank.

“Does anal fingering count?” Louis asked.

They all thought about it for a while.

“Yes,” said Liam. “You’re gay, aren’t you?”

“As a window,” Louis said. “Problem?”

“Of course not. Just making sure.”

“Okay,” said Jesy, “so here’s one we can all drink to - never have I ever had sex.”

Jesy, Jade, Leigh-Anne, Perrie, Liam and Louis all drank. Niall shifted uncomfortably on the bed and put his beer can down. They all stared.

“You’re joking,” said Louis eventually.

“Ha,” Niall said flatly.

“You’re _not_ joking,” said Jade.

Liam was staring at Niall like he had just stepped out of an alien spacecraft. Deliberately not meeting his gaze, Niall looked at his lap, tugging at the fabric of his jeans.

“How? Why?”

“Do you have a strangely shaped dick?” asked Louis.

Perrie kicked him.

“Ow!” said Louis.

“You can’t ask him that,” she scolded.

“I dunno, I haven’t seen a lot of dicks. I don’t think mine’s any different to anybody else’s,” Niall said.

“Have you been on house arrest for the past five years?” asked Louis.

“Hang on,” Liam said slowly, as if he was struggling to understand the concept. “You’ve never had sex. _Ever?_ ”

“Jesus,” Niall said crossly, “it’s not that big of a deal, is it? I just never got round to it.”

“How do you just not get round to it? Even Jade got round to it,” said Jesy.

“Hey!” protested Jade.

“No offence, babes, I just mean that you look too cute to lose your virginity.”

“Hmph,” said Jade, folding her arms.

“I dunno, I just didn’t,” said Niall. “I had a Catholic girlfriend for a couple of years; she took a chastity vow, or some shit. She didn’t want to have sex before she got married, I didn’t want to marry her, it all worked out. We just…didn’t do it.”

“Jesus. You poor, poor man,” said Louis.

Liam was staring at Niall’s crotch. Glaring, Niall covered it with his hands.

“Do you mind?”

“Sorry, I just - don’t you have to wank? Like, a lot?”

Niall shrugged. “Not really. Doesn’t bother me that much. I don’t really think about it.”

“I have to wank at least once a day,” Louis said. “Sometimes twice.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Jade.

They all laughed. Jade didn’t.

“What?” she said. “I have needs.”

“Look, this is an emergency,” said Louis. “Niall needs to get laid as soon as possible, before his balls drop off.”

“I dunno,” said Niall, “I don’t really - ”

“Look at him, he’s cute. He’s Irish. He has a nice smell, when he’s not hungover. Do I have any volunteers?”

“Don’t look at me,” said Jesy. “I’d do it, but I’m not single.”

“Me neither,” Leigh-Anne said.

“I am,” said Jade, “but that’d be like shagging my brother. We had a burping contest earlier. I can’t shag you after we’ve had a burping contest, it would be too weird.”

They all looked at Perrie.

“No offence, Niall, I think you’re really cute,” said Perrie, “but you’re not my type.”

“You’re bi,” said Liam, “everyone’s your type.”

“Oi!” said Perrie. “That’s a stereotype! And anyway, I prefer brunettes.”

“He’s not a natural blonde,” Louis wheedled.

“Look, it’s really not a big deal,” said Niall.

“I’ll fuck you, if you like,” said Louis. “I’m very good.”

“Thanks,” Niall said, “but I’d really rather not.”

Louis tutted. “Suit yourself.”

“Honestly, guys, I’m not that bothered about it. If it happens, it happens - it’s university, isn’t it? Everyone’s shagging all over the place; I caught a couple of lads at it on the stairs just this morning.”

“Yeah, but Niall,” said Liam, “it’s a bit…weird.”

“It’s just sex, it’s not as if I’ve been locking people in the basement, or never learned how to talk. So I’ve never stuck my dick in someone, so what?” He picked up his abandoned drink and downed the whole thing in one gulp, then folded his arms and looked away. “Look, can we play something else? I’m not really into this game any more.”

~*~

Louis was doing his best to clean up the kitchen, having left everyone else in Liam’s room. The girls were on their way to being properly squiffy, Liam was revelling in their attentions, and Niall had left not long after the disastrous end to ‘Never Have I Ever’, claiming a headache. Guilt had settled like a weight in Louis’ stomach; he had been tactless, he knew, but he had not expected Niall to get so upset. Sex was something Louis had taken for granted for a long time. He’d lost his virginity at fifteen - too young, drunk at a party, one foot out of the closet with a point to prove, fucking a girl just to make sure he wasn’t into it. The complete lack of interest he’d had in the proceedings had been like fireworks exploding and painting ‘GAY AS FUCK’ in the air right in front of him. He’d barely been able to get hard enough to go through the motions, though he’d blamed it on the booze at the time.

Niall, though, didn’t appear to be gay. He’d offered himself partially as a joke, but he would have slept with Niall if he thought the blond had wanted it - but he’d rebuffed Louis just as he had rebuffed the girls, even though they’d turned him down first. Maybe he was shy - but that didn’t fit in with what he knew of Niall at all. Would a shy person have burst into Louis’ room and immediately offered him vodka and weed? He thought not.

Sighing, he pressed his forehead against the window, letting the coldness seep into him, and that was when a soft voice behind him said, “Bad day?”

Louis turned. Harry was stood in the centre of the room, wearing a long black trench coat with a scarf wrapped around his neck. His cheeks were pinched pink with cold. The smell of cinnamon had drifted in with him, a pleasant contrast from the sweaty, stale smell of the kitchen. Someone needed to open a window.

“I think there’s something wrong with my mouth,” he said. “I don’t seem to know how to close it.”

Harry gave a husky laugh. “A lot of people have that problem.”

“Not you. Yours doesn’t seem to know how to open.”

“The hinges could do with a little oiling, maybe.” He drew a little closer. “I take it you’ve been getting yourself into trouble.”

“Oh, you know me,” said Louis, then remembered that Harry didn’t know him at all. None of them did, in that little flat; none of them knew that he’d cried when his mum kissed him goodbye, that he had five sisters and a brother back at home, that he loved musicals and sort of realized he was gay when he was thirteen, and spent the next two years denying it. They’d all fallen into easy conversations like they’d known each other forever, any awkwardness eased by the alcohol, but the truth of the matter was that none of them knew him at all. And they didn’t have to. He could forge himself anew - could be confident Louis, gay Louis, slutty Louis, funny Louis, not mummy’s boy Louis or dirty sweatpants Louis or geeky, all-day-Marvel-movie-marathon-in-pyjamas Louis. It was a lonely feeling, to realize that he could leave himself behind, to kill that old Louis and only bring him back for summer holidays and Christmas. It made his stomach churn. He had to look away from Harry, because he had a kind face, and he’d only been away for two days but for some reason Harry’s face was making him homesick.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” said Louis brusquely, shoving some glasses back into the cupboard with a clatter. “Fine.” His eyes stung; he blinked, hard. “Still hungover, you know. Hair of the dog. Phew.”

“So what did your big mouth do this time?” Harry asked.

“Ah, just spouted a load of tactless bollocks as usual. Pissed off a friend. Might have mortally offended him, actually. I’m good at that.”

“I’m sure he’ll forgive you. People say tactless things all the time.”

“You should have come,” said Louis. “You could’ve made me shut my mouth for once.”

“I get the feeling it’s pretty difficult to shut you up once you’ve started.”

“Yeah,” Louis admitted, “but…you should have come anyway. It would have been nice.”

Harry shifted slightly. He’d been drawing closer, but now he drifted backwards slightly, messing with the hem of his scarf. Clearing his throat, he made as if to speak, then stopped himself.

“I’d like to get to know you better,” Louis said softly.

He moved closer, close enough to smell the sweet scent hanging around Harry’s coat, to see the slightest of chips in his nail varnish. He’d missed a bit whilst shaving; Louis wanted to touch it, to rub the sandpapery bit of skin and feel how velvety the rest was beside it. Taking a deep breath, he looked very deliberately at Harry’s mouth and then back up again.

Harry took an unsteady breath. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said.

“Why not?”

He swallowed thickly. “Louis…”

“I won’t bite,” Louis said. “Not hard, anyway.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh come on, live a little. I’ll play nice, I promise.”

He had drawn close enough to taste Harry’s breath, to see the white flash of gum lying forgotten on his tongue. They were both breathing heavier, and Harry’s flush could no longer be attributed to the cold. Louis reached out to press the tips of his fingers against the back of Harry’s hand, and he jolted back as if he had touched something hot.

“No,” said Harry.

Louis blinked.

“I have to - I can’t - sorry.”

He was already stumbling backwards, towards the doorway, and Louis had to swallow down the flash of hurt that ran through him at the look on Harry’s face. Like he was a leper or something.

“Right,” Louis said, and he turned away and started clattering glasses, making as much noise as possible. Fucking straight boys, he thought savagely. Or even worse - queer boys in denial. He’d been one himself, once, but he was sure he’d never been so frustrating about it. Maybe he’d played drunk when he wasn’t, to make his experiences with men ‘less gay’, or repeatedly insisted he was straight, but he hadn’t blown hot and cold like this. One minute, Harry was a blizzard, the next minute, a drought. Louis had always been straight - ha! - with the people he fancied. Either he fancied a rumble, or he didn’t. None of this messing around.

But if Harry was so insecure in his sexuality - and God, Louis had known sandcastles with stronger foundations - then how did his fragile sense of masculinity stand to allow him to work in Lush and paint his nails? Desperately closeted gay boys didn’t usually break gender roles so blatantly. Harry was an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a long black trench coat, and he was still fucking standing there; Louis could feel his presence like a shadow, right in the edge of his awareness.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and he sounded like he meant it.

“It isn’t catching, you know,” said Louis. “Although if you’re so worried about catching my queer, you probably shouldn’t flirt back so hard. People will start to talk.”

“No, it’s not about that. This…isn’t about that.”

“Oh, so it’s just my personality that makes me so repulsive? Or is it my face?”

“No!”

“Oh, never mind,” Louis snapped, slamming down another glass so hard that he thought he felt it crack. “I don’t care. Just make up your mind, all right? Either we’re friends, or we’re not, but you have to choose between the two, because quite frankly, I can’t be arsed messing around. Whatever you’re playing at, I’m not interested.”

“I’m not…” Harry took a deep breath. “I’m not playing any games. And I’m sorry, but I can’t be friends with you.”

“Fine,” said Louis. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Harry hovered for a moment longer, then disappeared, leaving Louis to seethe in silence and examine the glass to see whether he’d broken it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may all seem a bit filler-y now, but it'll be important to the plot later on :)

Louis’ first lecture was on a Monday morning at 10am, which had seemed perfectly reasonable when he was signing up for it, and hideously unreasonable when he hit the snooze button on his alarm for the fourth time on Monday morning. Groaning, he rolled over. His bed was warm, and squashy, and smelled like sleep. He poked a toe out from beneath the duvet and recoiled at the chill that ran up his legs, making the hair on his legs stand on end. Nope. Not getting out of bed, not an option. He’d rather wax his legs with duct tape.

It was Niall who finally kicked him out of bed, bursting in with a yell of “TURN THE FECKIN’ ALARM OFF, WILL YA?” and throwing a shoe at Louis’ head. When Louis only groaned and fumbled for his phone, Niall pulled the duvet off, dumped it on the floor and sat on it, arms folded, wearing only his boxers.

“Get up,” he said sternly.

“Noooo,” Louis whined.

“Get up, you lazy bastard. And why is your alarm tone set to play Ride of The Valkyries?”

“It’s empowering. And loud.”

“You can say that again. Come on, shift your arse.”

Louis crawled to the edge of the bed, rolled off it, and landed on the floor, where he lay moaning and tugging on the edge of his duvet, trying to pull some of it back over himself. Niall hung on.

“Jesus, it’s like pulling teeth.” Niall poked him. “Are you ticklish? Where are you ticklish?”

He poked Louis’ ribs, then his belly. Louis yelped and recoiled. Niall scrabbled at his armpit, and Louis shrieked like a baboon in an enclosure.

“Aha! Gotcha!”

“No! NO! FUCK, STOP, I’LL KICK YOU IN THE FACE - ”

“What the fuck is going on?”

Jesy burst through the doors of the left hand wardrobe, her hair wrapped up in bulky rollers, looking extremely displeased.

“I’m dying!” howled Louis. “He’s killing me! Stop him!”

“Die quietly,” said Jesy. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Yes, we are!” said Louis, slapping Niall’s scrabbling fingers away. “Leave out!”

“This lazy bugger has a lecture in ten minutes!” said Niall, slapping him right back, “and he woke me up with his blasted alarm going off every five minutes for the past hour, so he’s going to make it to that lecture if it’s the last thing I do!”

Eyeing them both, Jesy gave a sigh and then got down on the floor and started prodding Louis with the ends of her fake nails.

“Get up. Get up. Get up get up get up get up get up get up - ”

“You’ll never get me with that old trick,” said Louis, wriggling away from her jabbing fingers. “I’m too annoying to be annoyed.”

“Get up get up get up get up get up get up get up get up get up get up get up - ”

The words were already mushing together like paper mache, garbled nonsense that was perhaps more annoying than the words themselves.

“I’d quit while you’re ahead, mate,” said Niall, raising his voice above the din, “you’ll never win, this girl is a fiend. She could try the patience of a saint. I bet even Jesus couldn’t hold up under this kind of pressure.”

“I never admit defeat!” Louis shouted.

Approximately thirty seconds later, Louis was grumpily changing out of his spiderman pyjama bottoms into a pair of trackies, and rooting around in the mess on his floor for a shirt that wasn’t stained and didn’t smell like pizza. There weren’t many options left. He’d been at university for almost a week and still not successfully set off the washing machine.

“I hate you both,” he said.

“Have fun at your lecture, sweetums!” Jesy said brightly. “Meanwhile, I’ll be catching up on my beauty sleep. Au revoir!”

With that, she clambered back through the wardrobe. Louis scowled after her, sorely tempted to go and rip the duvet off her bed and see how she liked it. Still, he was awake now - sort of, even if his eyes were still gunked up with sleep, and his hair was flattened on one side and defying gravity on the other - and if he jogged, he might even make it on time for his lecture. Maybe. If he could find a whole pair of shoes that wasn’t wet, or covered in sick. He was beginning to understand what everyone had said about the less glamorous part of university life - although so far, he was mostly living off cold pizza, not baked beans.

He glared down at Niall, who had wrapped himself in Louis’ duvet, and was peeping out from inside it, smiling. From the looks of things, he was already halfway back to sleep.

“Fuck you,” said Louis.

“You’ll thank us eventually,” Niall murmured. “When you win your BAFTA.”

“I’ll be expecting at least an Oscar to make up for this,” Louis said, swinging his rucksack onto his shoulder.

“Sure, sure, whatever,” said Niall, and then collapsed back onto Louis’ floor, having fallen asleep mid syllable. Louis hated him.

It was too cold for September; they seemed to have skipped the mounds of crunchy orange leaves and crisp autumn breezes that year, and delved straight into the freezing-your-proverbial-tits-off kind of weather, not helped by the fact that Louis had been unable to find a pair of shoes that weren’t at least damp, and wasn’t wearing a jacket. His breath came in misty puffs as he half-jogged towards where he hoped the lecture hall might be, and the hairs on his arms were standing on end so fiercely that he felt like a cactus.

The lecture hadn’t begun when he burst into the hall - thank god, that kind of dramatic entrance might not have made him particularly popular, if only because everyone would be jealous of him upstaging them so spectacularly - but almost all of the seats were filled. Louis wove through the seats, trying to catch people’s eyes, but no one seemed keen to look him in the face, although plenty of people were looking at his outfit. Almost everyone else was sitting bolt upright, bright eyed and bushy tailed, like fucking squirrels. Louis was sure caffeine was involved, if not hard drugs. No one should be so alert before 3pm on any day of the week.

One guy was sitting on his own at one of the little tables, but did not seem keen to relinquish his spare seat; his rucksack was perched on it, and even that looked more sentient than Louis felt at that moment. Sidling hopefully forwards, he tried a smile, but the guy just gave Louis’ ratty trackies a dirty look, as if they had just insulted his mother, and edged the free chair closer to the desk. In a moment of panic, Louis looked down - _please say the trackies don’t have anything gross on them_ \- and spotted what looked like tomato sauce near the crotch, but thankfully, no come, which was what he’d been worrying about. Sighing, Louis turned away. Along with the offending tracksuit bottoms, he was wearing wet Toms, and a t-shirt with ‘BAZINGA!!!’ splashed across the front; he wouldn’t have wanted to sit with him either. (He was sure that wasn’t his shirt. Had someone planted it on him for an amusing joke? Probably Niall. Or more likely, Liam had just left it in his room by accident. In the nicest way possible, Liam seemed like the kind of bloke who would watch The Big Bang Theory without a trace of irony.)

Drawing closer to the back of the hall, Louis found more of what he would consider to be his sort of people. Some of them smelt unshowered, one of them was actually slumped across his desk, snoring, with a puddle of drool gathering beneath his open mouth. Before long, his whole cheek would be swimming in spit. Louis gave him a wide berth. He’d rather sit on the floor than end up soaked in someone else’s dribble.

Just when Louis was about to abandon all hope and begin fighting one of the table hoggers - he refused to sit on the floor when there were at least eight seats occupied solely by rucksacks - he spotted a familiar face. Perrie, looking obscenely alert for that time of the morning, was sat by herself at a heavily graffitied desk, waving at him. In front of her was a pink, fluffy pencil case. With a great sense of relief, Louis hurried over to where she sat.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked, with one hand already resting on the back of the chair.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “It’s clearly marked ‘no arseholes wearing Big Bang Theory t-shirts.’”

Even as she said this, she grinned at him. Louis pretended to be hurt, leaning a little more heavily on the chair, which rocked alarmingly. She’d left him the wobbly seat, with the uneven leg. He might have been offended if he hadn’t known that he would have done exactly the same thing. For a moment, Louis deliberated over whether or not it would be worth bludgeoning a fellow student over the head to get a chair that didn’t wobble, but then a door banged at the front of the hall and a woman in a navy two-piece suit walked in, heels clacking imposingly. Everyone turned to look at her, silence falling like snow, thick and fast.

“Sit down, you tosser,” Perrie hissed, drawing the seat back with a scrape. “It’s about to start.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Louis said, dropping thankfully into the chair beside her and rummaging around in his bag for a pen. “And this isn’t my t-shirt, I swear.”

“Sure,” she said, smirking at him, and then the lecturer pulled out a little remote control and turned on the powerpoint presentation on an enormous projector, and Perrie turned her attention towards the front of the room.

For several minutes, Louis grappled with his rucksack, looking for something to write with. He unearthed two sticks of chewing gum, a used bus ticket, a handful of fluffy polo mints and a post-it note with ‘memes’ written on it, accompanied, inexplicably, by a smiley face. Bewildered, Louis screwed the note up and launched it towards the front of the room, earning several dirty looks from fellow students, then Perrie dropped a pencil in front of him without looking away from the front of the room.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

She didn’t respond, but Louis could see that she was smirking.

~*~

“So that wasn’t too bad,” Perrie said once the lecture was over, packing up an assortment of stationery into her pencil case. “I mean, I actually understood some of it. So there’s that.”

“Me too,” agreed Louis. “I understood it when she said ‘hello’, and also when she said, ‘see you next week.’ And I also understood what she said about the reading we’re supposed to do before the next lesson, but let’s pretend I didn’t.”

“Shameful,” Perrie said. “Hey, you fancy coming out tonight? They’ve got a pub quiz going on in The Bullock - ”

“The bollock?” Louis said, goggling at her.

“Not the bollock, you prick, The _Bullock_. As in, the animal? It’s this pub down the road from our flat, they do these pub quizzes every week. I am ace at pub quizzes. I’m in it to win. I reckon you and me would make a pretty good team.”

“You want me to go and sit in a pub full of forty-year-olds, drinking white wine and arguing over who’s the prime minister of Azerbaijan? I don’t do pub quizzes. I do tequila.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!” Perrie said, slinging her bag onto her shoulder. “Don’t you want to be a winner?”

Louis narrowed his eyes. “What’s the prize?”

“Victory.”

“There’s no prize, is there?”

She hesitated. “Well…not exactly, no. But I like to think that the honour of winning makes up for the lack of material gain.” Apparently realizing that she was not succeeding in persuading him, she started gabbling. “Come on Louis please it’ll be fun and I’ll love you forever and I’ll even buy you a drink.”

“Buy me two, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

She gave him a scathing look. “Don’t push your luck.”

Louis sighed theatrically. “Fine! I’ll come with you. But if there are any general knowledge questions, you’re on your own.”

Perrie shocked him by enveloping him in an enormous hug. “Yay! Oh, babe, I can’t wait, this is gonna be fantastic. You’re gonna love it. I promise.”

“Oh, God,” said Louis. “I’m going to regret this.”

~*~

The moment they stepped into the pub, Louis decided he hated Perrie. It was, there was no mistaking it, what Louis and his friends back home would have called a “dirty old man pub.” Not one of the other customers looked to be under the age of fifty and at least half of them had the beaky, bulbous noses that come as a result of years of hard drinking. Self-consciously, Louis probed his own nose. _Never,_ he promised himself. _If I ever even come close to that stage, I’ll smash my face on the kerb or come onto a straight guy and get myself a free nose job._

Confirming his suspicions that they had stepped into dirty-old-man territory, a chorus of wolf-whistles greeted them upon entry. Disgusted, Louis looked at Perrie, expecting an explosion, but she continued to smile sweetly. That in itself was a danger sign.

“All right, sweetheart?” one of the old men called. He seemed to be the king of the dirty old men; his nose looked like an enormous spot lurking under the skin, ready to erupt pus, and he wore a dirty raincoat with some suspicious oily looking stains on it.

Louis opened his mouth to tell the guy to fuck off, maybe pretend to be her boyfriend if the need arose, but Perrie stopped him with a hand to his elbow. With a puzzled smile, she stepped forwards.

“You look familiar,” she said slowly.

The man leered at her. Louis’ urge to punch him grew. “Do I?”

“Yeah,” she said, her brow furrowed with concentration. “Hang on, it’ll come to me…” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You look just like my granddad.”

The man shrunk immediately. Even his nose seemed to deflate, as if she’d popped it. Jeers rang around the pub as Perrie walked smartly up to the bar, leaned over it and said to the bartender, who was fighting a smile, “Two double vodka and cokes, please. I saw him touch your bum on the way in. Pervert. I can stand on his foot if you like. These heels are killer.” Twirling around, she kicked up her foot behind her to show off the five or six inches of stiletto heel hanging from her foot.

With a full smile, this time, the girl said, “Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on it later, but just watch he doesn’t grab your bum while you do it.” She started pouring the drinks.

“Ha,” Perrie said impressively. “The day any man touches me without my consent is the last day he touches anything with the same fingers. Thanks, babe.” Picking up the drinks, she carried them over to a secluded table whilst Louis trailed after her in awe.

The table was sticky and the surrounding area smelt like piss and stale smoke, but Perrie beamed like she’d brought him to a five star establishment as she set the drinks down. Gingerly, Louis sat down on the very edge of his seat. As an afterthought, he whipped his coat off, folded it up and sat on it, just in case the piss smell had been left by a recent offender. Unperturbed, Perrie took a sip of her drink.

“This is fun.”

“For you. We haven’t been here five minutes and you’ve already eaten a man for breakfast and flirted with the bartender.”

“That wasn’t flirting,” said Perrie. “That was solidarity. We women stick together.”

“I still can’t believe you brought me here,” Louis said, looking around. “This place reeks of piss and anoraks.”

“Patience, patience. You’re talking to the pub quiz queen. All the weird old men clear out when they start the quiz; it makes them uncomfortable that they don’t know Rihanna from a rhinoceros. Trust me. In about twelve minutes, all the uni students and underage college kids are gonna start pouring in and that’s when the real fun starts.”

“Huh,” said Louis. “I’m gonna need way more than a vodka and coke to get through this. Where’s that barmaid?”

“Nope,” Perrie said, grabbing his wrist before he could signal her over. “I need you sober as a judge. There’s only two of us on this pub quiz team and we’re not allowing any outsiders in. I play to win.”

“Not much fun beating these drunken old codgers.”

“I told you,” she said, “just wait.”

Sure enough, Perrie was right. After around ten minutes of them sat silently sipping their vodka and cokes while Absolute 80s droned in the background, there was a sound outside like a stampede and an avalanche had collided, along with a sudden roar of conversation with an intensity that Louis had come to associate with a football match. The old men braced themselves around the pub - one even seized a table for support - and then a deluge of teenagers burst through the front doors and surged over to the bar. Another bartender appeared from the back room for moral support and the whole room was filled with swearing and giggling and laughter and yelled insults, and when the madness cleared slightly and people started drifting off to individual tables, the tsunami of teenagers parted to reveal that every single dirty old man in the pub had mysteriously vanished.

Looking smugly over her drink, Perrie raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘I told you so.’

“Oh, all right,” Louis said crossly, “maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, and went to get them both another drink.

As he waited for Perrie to return, Louis scanned the room to size up the competition. He saw a group of boffins clumped in a corner with their brains practically bulging out of their temples, all sipping innocuous looking glasses of tap water or squash; the most adventurous of them all had a tall glass of coke placed in front of him. If there was a general knowledge section of the quiz, he suspected they would win. Another table was crammed with girls who had clearly been pre-drinking themselves into oblivion; one was already shrieking on the floor with her legs in the air. But the girl who caught Louis’ attention was sat at another table, dark hair streaming down her back.

She was laughing at something a friend had said, and holding a glass of something noxious and green, with a cocktail umbrella perched perkily on the rim. Even Louis’ gay arse could see that she was pretty, with big dark eyes and a sparkling smile. He stared at her, and with that strange sixth sense that allows people to know when they are being watched, she looked up and saw him.

They made eye contact, and Louis took a deep breath in preparation for the embarrassment of having her glare at him, but she just gave him a sunny grin and even a wave, a quick waggle of her fingers, before looking away.

Louis was making a rapid-fire checklist in his head. Pretty. Friendly. Funny, apparently, judging by the ripple of laughter that went around her table as she spoke. Little bells in his head were going ding-ding-ding!

“Perrie,” he said, seizing her arm as she went to sit down. “Look at that girl.”

“Oi, watch it!” said Perrie, as vodka and coke slopped all over the table. A beermat drifted by, floating on the puddle. “What girl?”

“Her, over there. The hot one.”

Carefully placing the drinks onto the soggy beer-mats, Perrie looked over, did a double take, and then said in a faux Texan accent, “Whoa, mama! I wouldn’t mind a piece of that.”

“Right?” said Louis. Then, “what happened to female solidarity?”

“I can have solidarity and appreciate a beautiful woman at the same time. Mmm, looks like I’m getting laid tonight.”

His head jerked. “What? She’s gay?”

“Gay, straight, I don’t know, but what I do know is that a lot of straight girls get an awful lot less straight after a couple of cocktails. I’m sure I can win her around.”

“You don’t know?” Louis demanded. “How can you not know? Surely you can tell.”

“Of course I can’t tell, what, do you think I have some kind of gay detector? There’s no secret signal, you know. You’re telling me you know whenever a gay guy walks into a room?”

“Of course. I always know when there’s a gay guy in the room because he immediately starts checking me out, obviously.”

“How disgustingly conceited of you,” said Perrie. “Well I’m afraid not all of us have that luxury. Are you sure it’s because you’re fit, or is it just your big head that makes them stare at you?”

Louis ignored that last part. “You must know. Surely you can get a hint. It’s instinctive, you know. Like evolution. We just recognise each other, you know?”

“I can see a fundamental flaw in your reasoning if you think girls who like girls can recognise each other due to genetics,” Perrie said sarcastically, “because that sort of thing doesn’t get passed down very quickly, considering that a lot of girls have vaginas.”

“Oh, come on, Perrie, just look at her, have a quick glance, go on. Hazard a guess.”

“Ugh, fine,” Perrie said, and she put down her drink.

For a few minutes, Louis allowed her to ogle in silence; after that, he started to get a bit fidgety. There was an intense expression on Perrie’s face, her brow furrowed, lips slightly parted. Every now and then her tongue flicked out to wet them. Several times Louis looked at the girl himself, then back to Perrie, trying to determine whether there was some kind of intensely gay staring competition going on, but the girl didn’t seem to have cottoned on to Perrie’s staring. Irritated, he began to drum his fingers on the tabletop.

Eventually, Louis said impatiently, “Well is she gay or not?”

“You can’t rush this,” said Perrie, without peeling her gaze away. “It is an imprecise art…”

Disgusted, Louis slumped to the table and downed the rest of his drink in one bitter swallow.

“Wait…my lesbian senses are tingling…”

Louis leaned forwards expectantly.

“Hmm…interesting. Due to the slightly messy blending of the Naked 2 Palette eyeshadow into the crease, the uneven eyeliner flicks and the freckle on her left wrist, I have been able to determine that she is in fact… a lesbian!” cried Perrie, pointing dramatically at the girl.

“Fuck off,” said Louis, slapping her hand. “Be serious.”

“Babe, you asked me to determine someone’s sexuality with my Darwinian powers of lesbianism. Did you really expect me to take you seriously? I’m not even a lesbian!” She rolled her eyes. “Why do you care so much, anyway? You’re not thinking of going straight on me, are you?”

Louis pretended to vomit. “Hardly. Not bi, either, before you ask. No offence, but I think I’d rather sew my own eyelids shut. No, I just need to know if she’s straight because if I’m not mistaken - and I hardly ever am - that girl over there is our boy Niall’s next girlfriend.”

Swinging around in her seat, Perrie subjected the girl to a whole new kind of appraisal. Her eyes raked up and down, narrowing, as she examined her. Louis had never understood how girls were able to judge another girl’s character with just one long, hard look - or how they were so often right - but it was a fearsome power that he knew better than to underestimate. Hence, he stayed silent as Perrie stared.

“Hmm,” she said. “She seems nice enough. You’re sure our Niall can handle her? She looks like the kind of girl who’d be into a bit of hardcore BDSM.”

It was a good job Louis had already finished his drink, or else he’d have choked on it. “ _Her_? You can’t be serious.”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Perrie said wisely. “Honestly, if you heard some of the stuff our little Jadey’s into, you’d turn in your grave.” She stared off into the distance as if looking at something Louis couldn’t see, a haunted look in her eyes.

“Right,” Louis said, unimpressed. “So you can’t tell whether she’s a lesbian, but you can tell she’s into sadomasochism?”

“The power of the mind works in mysterious ways,” Perrie said cheerfully, crunching on a slice of lemon she’d fished out of her glass. “It’s simple, babes; you wanna find out if she’s gay, you’re gonna have to ask her. And try and be subtle about it, you know? Not like your usual train wreck of a conversation opener.”

“I can be subtle,” Louis said. “I’m subtle as a fucking submarine. An invisible submarine, is what I’m saying. Like the Navy uses.”

One of the bartenders came around passing out pieces of paper to write their quiz answers on, and Perrie clapped her hands, the girl immediately forgotten.

“Ooh! Time to think of our team name.”

“The Wingmen,” said Louis, still watching the girl, who was designated writer for her quiz team and was noting something down with a smile on her face. “Here to fight crime and pop our friend’s cherry.”

“I’m a woman,” Perrie said severely, “and that name’s shit. Our team name has got to win! It has to be charming, sophisticated. Debauched! Disgusting. Our team name has to be fucking filthy. You always win prizes for sex.”

“I don’t think you get any points for the team name,” Louis pointed out.

“That’s not the point! A funny name makes us memorable! We could become pub quiz regulars, our name in lights! The name we pick today could be our legacy. We need something dynamic, something shocking, something like…” She brightened. “Pull Out Before You Quiz!”

Louis snorted. “What?”

“Get it? Like pull out before you jizz, but instead of jizz, you put quiz.”

“Yeah, I get it. How is that better than The Wingmen?”

“It’s poetic genius,” said Perrie, and she pulled out a fluffy pink gel pen and wrote _Pull Out Before You Quiz_ at the top of the paper in roundish writing, emblazoned with a little heart.

Louis said nothing, just shot another sneaky glance across the room at the girl before the quiz started.

The first round was, to Louis’ disgust, a general knowledge section, which pleased no one apart from the little group of clever-looking students in the corner, who kept grabbing the paper off each other to scribble down answers to queries like ‘what is the capital city of Canada?’ and ‘in what year was the Eiffel tower built?’ Halfway through the round, Louis started bitterly wishing that he’d actually listened to his geography teacher in high school, although from what he remembered it wouldn’t have helped him anyway. They learnt about waterfalls and volcanoes and not anything that seemed particularly geographical to him. He didn’t even know how many countries there were in the world. Perrie saved him several times, writing the answers to a few questions down, but they came close to last that round. They might have done better if Perrie hadn’t noticed Louis fiddling with his phone under the table, rapidly Googling the answers whilst pretending to think, and slapped it out of his hand. (“Cheaters never prosper, Louis.” “No, they don’t prosper - they just _win_.”)

After that, the bartender brought out a huge chalkboard, collected the papers and wrote all of their team names down. A ripple of laughter passed through the room as she scrawled ‘Pull Out Before You Quiz’ at the bottom of the scoreboard; Perrie looked around smugly, whilst Louis tried not to meet her gaze and concede that she had been right about choosing a good name. The next round - focused on TV and movies - would be vocal, people shouting out their answers, which was probably a good thing because it wouldn’t take long before they were all too drunk to hold a pencil. Louis’ fingers were already getting that thick, tingly feeling that he associated with drunkenness.

“Question one,” the bartender called. “In the Hugh Grant film _Four Weddings and A Funeral_ , what is the first line spoken by the lead actor?”

Louis leapt up and yelled, “FUCK!”

Fresh laughter filled the room. One of the guys from the swotty table gave a bray of amusement and almost fell off his chair; perhaps he had been drinking vodka after all, Louis thought. Across the table, Perrie looked mortified; she seized his shirt and tried to yank him back down.

“Louis, what’s the matter with you?”

“Fuck!” Louis said triumphantly. “The first line spoken by Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral is ‘fuck!’”

“Correct,” said the quizmaster, and added a point to their score.

“Oh,” said Perrie.

Louis said nothing, just sat back in his seat and sipped his vodka, wishing he had a straw so that he could slurp on it just to emphasize his point.

“How the fuck do you know that?” Perrie hissed across the table, the quizmaster already reading the next question out aloud. “I’ve never even heard of that movie.”

Louis shrugged. “My mum fancies Hugh Grant. Well. Did fancy Hugh Grant. Before he got old and displayed questionable morals by fucking a prostitute instead of his wife. I’ve seen all of his films at least eight times.”

“Even Bridget Jones?”

“Oh, _especially_ Bridget Jones. That film is a classic. Hugh was magnificent as Daniel Cleaver. Lecherous, arrogant, said ‘fack’ instead of ‘fuck’. Posh as balls. The absolute picture of debauchery.”

“You’re sure it was just your mum who fancied him?”

“I couldn’t possibly comment,” Louis said, “now shut up, I didn’t hear the question.”

This round went far better than the first one, not only because Louis knew far more about movies than he did about Canada, but also because he yelled the answers more loudly than everybody else. Several times he mortally offended the nerd table by bellowing answers over their politely cited nerd references - the wrong answers, more often than not, but by that point he was drunk enough not to care, pleasantly elastic, a little bit giggly. He only settled down when the quizmaster, tired of Louis yelling “PENIS!” every time he asked a question, threatened to disqualify him. A little sulkily, Louis sat down.

“No sense of humour, this lot.”

“Shouting ‘penis’ is not funny unless you’re fifteen, Louis.”

“You just don’t appreciate me enough.”

One person who, Louis was gratified to notice, did appear to appreciate the subtle nuances of bellowing ‘PENIS’ at inappropriate intervals, was Niall’s prospective girlfriend. When everyone else had long since grown sick and tired of it, he could still hear her giggling quietly every time, glass clinking against her teeth. And then she finally solidified his certainty that she was a perfect girlfriend for Niall, by beating him at an answer completely unexpectedly.

“Question nine,” the Quizmaster said a little wearily, presumably waiting for Louis to start interrupting again, “what is the real name of the character who goes by the pseudonym of ‘Deadpool’?”

Confidently, Louis opened his mouth to give the answer, but a clear voice beat him to it, carrying across the room with an ease that disgusted him; he was drunk enough by that point that he’d been reduced to screeching his answers at top volume, unable to articulate them any other way.

“Wade Wilson.”

Louis experienced the unpleasant sensation of choking on his own spit. It felt like someone had rammed a ball of screwed up paper down his throat and forced it down the wrong way; he coughed and spluttered as Perrie banged him on the back hard enough to break his shoulderblades, and by the time he’d recovered, the quizmaster had already given the girl the point and moved on.

“She beat me!” Louis said incredulously.

“Shut up, you drunken prick, keep your voice down.”

“But she beat me!”

“Well spotted.”

For a moment, all Louis could do was sit, his jaw working, trying to get his head around what the fuck had just happened. Then, a grin spread across his face.

“She’s perfect.”

“Right, genius, and you’ve come to this conclusion how, exactly?”

“She likes Deadpool. There isn’t a Deadpool movie yet, which means she knows about comics.”

“Louis,” Perrie said, “it’s 2015. Girls like comics. Everybody likes comics. This isn’t the stone age, men don’t carve pictures of Deadpool into a stone tablet so that only Men and The Elusive Cool Girl can see them. Just because she likes Deadpool doesn’t mean she’s some kind of goddess.”

“Shut up,” Louis said dreamily. “She’s perfect. We have to get Niall on a date with that girl.”

“You’re hopeless,” said Perrie.

They lost by a huge margin; Louis started yelling other profanities, shouting “send him off, ref!” whenever someone was given a point for an answer he didn’t consider to be detailed enough, and “GOAL!” whenever he or Perrie scored a point. The Quizmaster, tired of his shit but still not tired of his money, started taking points off every time he spoke out of turn, and they ended up at the bottom of the scoreboard and heading dangerously close to being in the minuses. Giving up on trying to make him behave, Perrie just sank drink after drink and slid lower in her chair every time he spoke, until the quiz was over and the room started to clear. That was when Louis made his move.

The girl was pulling her coat on when he approached her, smiling disarmingly. “Alright, love?”

“Hi,” she said with some amusement. “How are you feeling? That was a spectacular defeat.”

“Disgustingly unfair is what it was, they should fire the judge. But I will go on,” Louis said bravely. “What’s your name?”

“Sarah,” she said, just as Perrie walked over and said surprisingly steadily, “Dear God, Louis, leave the girl alone.”

“Shut up, Perrie,” said Louis. “I’m Louis. That’s Perrie.”

“Like the platypus?”

“Exactly like the platypus,” Louis said solemnly, “except with an I-E instead of a Y, and without the tail and blue fur and the evil plotting and such. Actually, I don’t know about the fur.”

Sarah laughed. “Well to what do I owe the pleasure? I saw you staring.”

“I was just admiring the view,” Louis said.

“Oh really?”

“Absolutely,” Louis said. “In fact, I was wondering if you were free some time next week. For a date sort of thing.”

Sarah looked him up and down, her gaze flickering from his eyes to his toes and then settling back on his face again. A small smile curved across her face, with a flash of teeth. “I might be,” she said.

It took Louis’ drunken brain a few seconds to process that she’d just given him The Look and somehow he had failed to get himself across properly. His brain clunked like a steam train; a tiny little drunken engineer was shovelling coal into the furnace, working valiantly away to get him chugging along again, but the cogs kept turning and he still didn’t understand quite what she’d said until Perrie stood on his foot very hard, thankfully with the ball of her foot, and the pain was sharp enough to bring everything shooting into focus.

“Oh!” he said, laughing. “Oh, God, not with me! I’m gay. I was actually hoping you’d go on a date with my friend.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, her face falling ever so slightly. She looked at Perrie. “Well, I’m really sorry, but I’m actually straight. But if I ever change my mind you’ll be the first to know.”

Perrie, the traitor, looked downcast, but then looked up and gave a brave smile, her eyes dancing with the most obvious bedroom eyes Louis had ever seen. Louis thought about her earlier comments about the dubious straightness of straight girls and resisted the urge to trip her up.

“Actually,” he said, “I didn’t mean her, either.”

“Right,” said Sarah. “And is this friend imaginary, or is he just hiding under the table where I can’t see him?”

“He’s not actually with us at the present time,” Louis said. He sighed. “Look, I’m too drunk to be subtle, so let’s not beat about the bush.” That was hard enough to say sober; saying it drunk, he felt, warranted some kind of award. “I’ve got a friend who’s in desperate need of a girlfriend, and to put it frankly, you’re fucking gorgeous. And I’m gay. So I’m trying to set you up with him and apparently doing very badly at it.”

The girl folded her arms, but she ruined the unimpressed expression by smiling slightly. Enthused by his success, Louis turned the charm up a notch, giving her his best flirty, if slightly boozy grin. Admittedly, trying to flirt with someone he was trying to set up with a mate might not have been the best strategy, but Louis had never been a traditionalist.

“So let me get this straight,” said Sarah. “You want to set me up on a blind date with your friend? That sounds kind of dangerous. He could be a murderer.”

“Niall’s not a murderer. He’s Irish. Here, I’ll show you a picture.”

Louis fumbled with his phone and swiped through a collection of blurry photos he’d taken whilst drunk. There were plenty of Niall, but none where he didn’t look disgusting - in one, he had vomit on his shirt, whether it was his own or someone else’s, Louis couldn’t tell. In another, he was at a terrible angle and had a double chin. With increasing concern, he continued to swipe - Niall was wearing an ugly shirt, posing pretentiously with a guitar, pouting, for fuck’s sake. He put the phone away.

“Er, actually,” said Louis, “I won’t show you a picture. Perrie, show her a picture.”

“What?” Perrie said, frowning. “You’re always waving your phone around, you must have loads of pictures of him.”

“I do,” said Louis, then he turned to Sarah and said, “But, if I show you these photos then you are going to think that Niall is an obnoxious git.” He paused. “You would not be wrong, but I feel like that is the kind of opinion you should formulate for yourself after watching him fall off a table singing the national anthem, rather than having it shoved underneath your nose in the form of a photo of him laughing at someone whilst covered in vomit.”

“Nice,” said Sarah. “Does he have instagram?”

Niall’s instagram feed was even worse than Louis’ blurry camera roll; it consisted partially of photos of his TV displaying various sporting events, captioned with boring game commentary, and the rest was pretentious photos of Niall posing with his guitar or wearing ugly glasses, with various awful filters layered over the top to add insult to injury.

“Er, no,” he said. “Why don’t we facebook stalk him instead?”

“How 2009,” said Sarah, but she allowed Louis to find a photo of Niall that made him look fairly decent, beaming at the camera without any stains on his shirt and his guitar tucked safely away in a corner. With bated breath, Louis waited. Sarah scrutinised the photograph for what he considered to be a concerning amount of time, considering that he’d read somewhere that it only took the human brain 90 seconds to decide whether or not you fancied someone. Louis thought that was bollocks; he could suss out whether or not someone was fit within 0.3 seconds and have their number within the 90. Perhaps a little longer if they were a tough nut or their brain was a little slower at identifying hot people than his was.

“He’s all right,” Sarah said eventually, and handed the phone back.

She was playing it cool, Louis decided; she was well into him. Smug, he shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“Why don’t we buy you a drink and discuss our plan of attack?” he said.

Sarah glanced across at her group of friends, who had been drifting towards the doorway, keeping one eye on her. At a nod from her, they dispersed, filtering off into the night, and five minutes later Perrie, Louis and Sarah were all nursing violently pink drinks and had huddled around the least sticky table in the building. Most of the dirty old men had scarpered, so they had to keep their voices lowered to compensate for the lack of background buzz, lest the barmaids overhear their conversation. Despite his best efforts, Louis was pretty sure the whole street could hear him; he wasn’t good at being quiet on a good day.

“So let me get this straight,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t actually want a girlfriend, and you’re trying to set me up with him…why?”

“Because he’s sad and desperate,” Louis said, “and too stubborn to realize it. I recognise a lonely man when I see one. He’s only been single for a year and you’re already looking wary; if it goes on for much longer, everyone’s going to think there’s something wrong with him and he’ll never get a date again. He’ll be forty years old, coming home from golf with the lads to a house full of microwave meals and cats, and one day Perrie and I will say, ‘You know what, let’s go visit our old pal Niall, we haven’t heard from him in a while, let’s see how he’s getting on,’ and we will turn up at his house to find his dismembered corpse on his kitchen floor, being nibbled by an alsatian.”

“An alsatian?”

“Alsatians prey upon lonely single people,” Louis said. “It’s a well-known fact; have you never watched Bridget Jones?”

“Not everyone is as obsessed with Hugh Grant as you are,” said Perrie.

“Whatever,” said Louis. “Listen, he doesn’t know what’s good for him. It’s an intervention. It’s like making little kids eat their broccoli. They dig their heels in and complain, but it’s got to be done, or else they’ll get scurvy….” He trailed off. “That was a lot more relevant in my head. Anyway, my point is he must have balls like coconuts by now and it’s only a matter of time before they pop and turn into saggy, deflated balloons and he has to have an operation to remove the loose skin and then he will have no balls and no girlfriend and will be sad and single forever. You have to save him, Sarah! You’re our only hope!”

Shaking her head, Sarah glanced across at Perrie, who was sipping her drink with a martyred expression, her cheeks sucked into hollows deep enough to drink out of.

“Is he always this melodramatic?”

“Worse,” said Perrie, and sucked on her straw so hard that it rattled around the empty glass, her spit making a slurping sound.

Louis shuddered for effect; they both rolled their eyes.

“Look,” said Perrie, “Louis is a melodramatic little fucker, that’s true, but Niall does need this. I think he’s just a shy one - you’d laugh at that if you knew him, but I do. You know how weird it is having sex or going on a date when you haven’t in a while, and he’s never had sex _at all_. So on top of the stress of doing it for the first time, he’s got the stress of being judged by everyone who thinks he’s a freak. Look. You don’t have to do this. But it would be a great favour if you would go on a date with him - just one. You don’t even have to go on another one, although it’d be nice if you let him down gently. I just think it would really boost his confidence if he could go on a date at all.”

For a while, Sarah stared at her drink, swirling her straw around whilst the mixture danced and fizzed, spitting sparks like an asthmatic dragon. Louis tried watching her, but he was beginning to feel sleepy and he soon became mesmerised by the movement of her straw, the mixture whirling, a bright pink witch’s brew like painted toenails and poisonous mushrooms, and he was so fascinated by the sight that when she finally threw the straw down on the table, splattering his arm with the drink, it made him jump.

“All right, fine,” she said. “Give me his number, add me on Facebook so you can show him a pic, and I’ll arrange a date. But if he’s a mouth breather, the deal’s off. I can handle farting, talking with a full mouth, and mild snoring, but mouth breathing is a deal-breaker.”

Louis cheered and banged on the table, almost spilling the rest of Sarah’s still spitting drink.

“You won’t regret this,” he said. “I promise.”

“Oh,” said Sarah, looking amused, “I think I will.”

~*~

As he headed home, arms linked with Perrie - he’d offered his arm first, intending to escort her, but even in her heels Perrie was far steadier on her feet than he was, apparently unaffected by the lethal hot pink cocktail - Louis was buzzing with satisfaction. He was drunk! He was happy! He had found Niall a girlfriend! He couldn’t walk or see straight, and if he got hit by a car at that exact moment he would be too drunk to notice and too happy to care. As he lurched into the gutter, he was treading on marshmallows. The distant roar of traffic was a heavenly exultation to his ears. His whole body felt fuzzy, dancing between numbness and overstimulation, as if someone could punch him and he wouldn’t feel it, but the lightest touch would have felt painfully intimate. Beaming, Louis turned to look at Perrie and realized she’d been talking for the past five minutes and it had all streamed straight past him without his notice.

“Yes,” he said, hoping that was an adequate response.

Perrie gave him an exasperated look; apparently, it hadn’t been.

“You aren’t listening.”

“I’m listening,” Louis protested. “But my brain is on a tea break.”

She tutted. “I was just saying, do you think we’ve done the right thing?”

“Whuh?” Louis said eloquently.

“With Niall! Setting him up with that girl. I mean, he doesn’t know her. We don’t know her. She could be awful. And he never asked…I mean, what if we’ve made a terrible mistake?”

“Perrie,” said Louis. “That man. That Niall. That…nail file. He needs us. We are wonderful. We are his fairy godmother. I am the legs. You are the face and sexy bits. But he doesn’t know what he wants, so we have to find it for him. It’s like a whatsit…destiny. This was _meant to be_. One day, when Niall’s balls are a normal colour, he will understand.”

“You do talk some shit when you’re drunk,” Perrie said, and she patted his arm.

“ _Non_ ,” said Louis. “I talk shit _all the time_. But look. What will be will be. We have already asked her on a date. So now it’s too late…and we’ll have to see what happens next.”

“Yeah,” Perrie said. “I guess you’re right…stand up straight, you drunken bastard, I do actually want to make it home before tomorrow night, and I’m not carrying you. If you fall down, I’m fucking leaving you there.”

“You’re all heart,” said Louis.

“Yep,” said Perrie. “Heart, heels, and…”

“Head.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” said Louis, and tripped over his shoelaces.

“God,” said Perrie. “Come on, genius, let’s get you home.”

And together, they ambled off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, there is now a Deadpool movie, but at the time when I wrote this it wasn't out yet.


	4. Chapter 4

The morning after the pub quiz, Louis awoke feeling remarkably all right; his mouth tasted like a sandpit that had been pissed in and the thought of food made him want to cry, but he was able to stand up without vomiting and he didn’t even feel like passing out. _Probably a delayed action hangover_ , he thought, but enthused by the lack of a stabbing sensation from his frontal lobe, he shuffled into the kitchen, where Niall was chewing a piece of burned toast.

“Morning,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Remarkably okay,” Louis said, and switched the kettle on. The kitchen smelt singed. “That toast looks as though it’s been cremated.”

Niall snorted. “Yeah. Some bastard’s been messing with the toaster. I had it set just perfect - just so the bread turned brown in the middle. Did you have fun last night?”

“Sure,” said Louis. “Perrie and I went to the quiz night at the Bull’s Bollocks, or whatever that dingy little shithole down the road is called.”

“Did you win?”

“Of course,” Louis said loftily, rooting in the fridge for the least curdled-looking bottle of milk.

There was a pause. He could feel Niall looking skeptically at his back.

“Oh, all right, so technically we didn’t win,” he said, straightening up, “but I had a good time, so I’m still a winner.”

“Right,” said Niall, cracking his toast in half with a splintering noise like a lion gnawing on a bone.

Louis winced. Getting a spoon out of the drawer, he swirled it around inside the mug, saying, “Oh, I forgot - I have good news for you! I’ve found you a girlfriend.”

Niall suddenly stopped chewing and turned an alarming shade of red. His skin continued to darken, eyes bulging; Louis started to worry that he was choking on the toast and was preparing to leap across the table and perform the Heimlich maneuver - or just bash him between the shoulder blades until he stopped choking - when Niall opened his mouth, black crumbs flying like flecks of ash, and exploded, “WHAT?”

“Oh, she’s really fit, mate, good taste in movies, great boobs. I had to fight Perrie for her, it took some doing, let me tell you, but I think I -”

“Louis!” Niall said thunderously, slamming the crust of his toast down onto the plate. “I told you I don’t want a girlfriend! What have you done?”

Before Louis could reply, Niall cut in with a tirade of profanities like a volcanic eruption, spouting swear words all blurred together at top volume, all the while glowing the colour of a sunburned tomato. For a while, Louis was too awed by the sheer force of Niall’s swearing to respond, and just stood watching him swell with rage, but he drew the line when Niall snapped, “You’re an insufferable twat, you know that? It’s all about what you think I should want. Shoving it in my face, telling everyone how much of a freak I am, just because I’m not some sex-obsessed nympho!” He didn’t add ‘like you’, but it was definitely implied.

Affronted by his tone, Louis demanded,“What’s wrong with you, you miserable prick? I’m just trying to help. I know you said you aren’t interested, but quite frankly that’s bullshit. You’re a lonely loser and you need to get a life. And more importantly, a sex life. So I found you a pretty girl, I’ll give you her number, you can text her and set up a date.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? I said no! What part of that isn’t getting through to you, huh? Is it the he N, or the O?”

“Look, we’re all sick of you sitting around doing fuck all, you miserable bastard, we’re trying to help you, so why don’t you suck it up and go on a fucking date?”

“I’m not miserable! I don’t give a shit, I don’t care if I’m single, what’s making me miserable is you lot bothering me, trying to set me up with every random girl who passes by! You’re a nightmare, you know that? You get fucking obsessed. You know what, no wonder -”

Niall shut up, then, lips clamped together, with the unmistakeable air of someone forcing themselves not to say something that they know they’ll regret. Of course, Louis, being Louis, had a sudden urge to push him further, poke the bruise until he went off like a grenade, regardless of how much of a bad idea it was. Never one to back down from a fight, he stood up, squaring his shoulders, mug of tea held in front of him like a weapon.

“What? What, go on, if you’ve got something to say, you say it? No wonder what? Come on, bad man, you got something to say to me?”

“Go to hell,” said Niall, and he stormed out, leaving his plate on the sideboard and a burnt smell in his wake.

Louis was so angry that he downed his entire mug of tea in one scalding gulp, molten liquid pouring down his throat, making him gasp. His eyes watered and he slammed the mug down on the table, blinking back the tears before he left the room, leaving a suitable pause so that he wouldn’t be in any danger of running into Niall again - especially not with wet eyes. Embarrassing.

After that, he had a lecture to attend, which he did with very bad grace, coming in late - as usual - and sitting on the floor at the back with an open notebook in his lap. The hangover was beginning to come in with full force, laughing at him for thinking he’d escaped it; it pounded at his temples like a child playing knock and run, occasionally offering him brief periods of respite before coming back for more. With every surge of discomfort, his mood grew ever more foul. Before long, he gave up on even pretending to pay attention and began to focus on drawing insulting caricatures of Niall getting his cock swallowed by an alsatian. Doodling this bestial monstrosity did, absurdly, cheer him up, and by the end of the lecture he felt slightly less like an aspiring serial killer and a bit more like a man with a plan.

Shortly after the lecture was over, he stumbled through the wardrobe into Perrie’s room. She had evidently decided to skip the lecture. The curtains were drawn, the whole room in shadow, and there was a smell of fruity perfume and hairspray in the air. Hunched beneath her duvet, Perrie was little more than a misshapen blob; Louis kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed with her, getting a whine for his trouble. For a minute, they tussled, Perrie attempting to kick him back out while Louis tried to steal all of her accumulated warmth, but eventually she gave up and resurfaced, her hair falling all over the place. With a distinctly unimpressed look, she rolled over again, turning her make-up smudged face away from him. Louis settled down with an arm thrown over her, pressing his cold chin against her bare shoulder.

“I told Niall about the date,” said Louis.  
“Ungh,” Perrie said, then rubbed her eye with the back of her hand. Dark splotches came off on her skin; apparently she hadn’t taken her mascara off the night before. “How’d he take it?”

“Badly. There was some screaming. Names were called.”

“Oh,” said Perrie. “Oh _no_ … and she was so _nice_. What are we going to tell her?” While saying this, she sounded woebegone, but also half asleep. Perhaps even three-quarters asleep, with a mere thread tying her to consciousness.

Sleepy Perrie was adorable, but hardly worthy of being Louis’ partner in crime. For a moment, he debated the comparative merits of tickling her into wakefulness - pros, she would stop dozing off and contribute something useful to the discussion, cons, she would kick him in the face, then the balls, then break his arm and possibly smother him with her duvet. Eventually, he decided to let her be. After all, a plan was already formulating in his brain.

“ _We’re_ not going to tell her anything,” he said. “ _Niall_ , however, is going to text her and tell her to meet him at that new Indian restaurant in town, next Tuesday at four thirty in the afternoon.”

She stirred against him, turning to look at him with a kind of confusion akin to a puppy being locked outside in the cold - almost wounded by her own lack of understanding. He could practically hear the cogs of her brain, gunked up with sleep, struggling to turn.

“Don’t you worry about it,” he said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve got this completely under control.”

~*~

On the aforementioned Tuesday, Louis woke up in the morning and lay for a while in bed, smugly contemplating his own dastardly villainy. The plan was perfect. It had been half-cooked when he was drunk and in bed with Perrie; the rest had come together on its own, like accidental pottery. One minute it was a mess on the wheel, the next, it had whirled itself into a masterpiece. Perhaps a little rough around the edges, but structurally sound.

Stage one had been the most difficult part. Not long after his fight with Niall, Louis had crawled out of Perrie’s bed and back into his room, where he’d taken a seat inside his wardrobe and pressed his ear against the crack, listening. Before long, he’d been rewarded by the sound of running water, Niall stepping into the shower. Hence, the first piece of Louis’ plan fell into place. As Niall himself at pointed out the first day they met, having open access to other people’s room made it all too easy to steal things - which was why it was laughably simple for Louis to enter the room several minutes later, when he was certain that Niall was safely ensconced in the shower, and pick his phone up off the bedside table.

What he hadn’t accounted for was that unlike most people, Niall did not waste shower time wanking, so the water cut off when Louis was still lounging on his bed, bouncing text after text off to Sarah and doing his best to mimic Niall’s texting style.It was a near miss; Louis bolted and the wardrobe doors banged behind him just as Niall came out of the bathroom, fluffing up his hair with a towel. He then watched gleefully through the crack between the doors as Niall tore his whole room apart looking for the missing phone, which was still clasped in Louis’ slightly sweaty hand. It was cute, he thought, that Niall never even bothered to burst in through the wardrobe to find out if Louis was responsible, just swore and overturned his furniture and ransacked all his drawers and ended up sat on his bed, panting with rage. Seeing Niall so ruffled was an unusual sight, and after their fight, Louis was vindictive enough to enjoy it.

He sat on his bed for a while, texting Sarah and intermittently attempting to beat Niall’s high score on angry birds. After copious amounts of flirting, he arranged the date for the Tuesday at half four, then told Sarah, still pretending to be Niall, that his phone was going in for repair, and not to text him again because he wouldn’t receive it. He then blocked her number for good measure, to avoid any nasty surprises, waited for Niall to storm out to check the kitchen for his phone, and replaced it on the bedside table where he’d found it, just to fuck with him.

Stage two involved getting Niall back on his side. That took a little more patience - Louis was not one for apologising, in fact, he was so stubborn he would usually rather tear his own toenails out with a pair of tweezers than actually unbend his pride for long enough to do it. Hence, he had to allow the cold silence to stretch between them for several days, enough that he actually started to miss Niall’s presence - and then get drunk. He didn’t get as drunk as he had pretended to be, just tipsy enough to make it convincing, and then staggered through the wardrobes to apologise to a bemused Niall on bended knee, begging as though for his life. Niall, not being one for grudges, accepted, of course. After that, Louis only had to share his booze and try not to look too smug about how well the plan was coming together.

Then, stage three.

Stage three was simply inviting Niall to come to the new Indian restaurant in town with him on Tuesday at four thirty, as a peace offering, since they’d both been talking about trying it - prompted, of course, by Louis subtly bringing it up in conversation a few times before inviting him. They had a reservation booked under the name of Niall Horan - what Niall didn’t know was that Louis was going to stand him up and send Sarah in instead, and for the sake of courtesy, Niall would have to sit through the date, fall in love with her, and consequently fall into bed with her. Not necessarily in that order.

Yes, Louis thought with satisfaction, he was a genius indeed.

~*~

Four fifteen on Tuesday. Louis and Niall were ambling towards the restaurant, Niall still talking whilst Louis checked his phone as surreptitiously as he could. Ridiculously, he was nervous. He’d sent Perrie ahead to scout the restaurant out, and she had confirmed that Sarah was already there, waiting at the table - early, bless her. Unfortunately, that had not factored into Louis’ plans; he’d been hoping she would be a fashionably late kind of girl. Now, he couldn’t just dump Niall at the table, go for ‘a toilet break’ and vanish; he would have to figure out some way of getting him to sit at the table with Sarah. Perhaps with some misdirection. Or perhaps he would have to bash Niall over the head, sit him in an upright position and hope that Sarah wouldn’t realize he was unconscious for the first ten minutes of their date.

Louis’ hands were getting horribly sweaty.

As they approached the restaurant, he looked it up and down. It was glass-fronted, with two glass columns on either side of the door where bubbles frothed up and down, changing colour with a backlight that drifted through a rainbow of colours. It was relaxing and energising all at once, the calmness of the shifting colours contrasted by the bubbles shooting around inside the glass. The front doors themselves were shiny wood with two gleaming glass panels, showing muted lighting coming from within. At least, he thought, he had dragged Niall on a date to a nice restaurant. Apparently, Niall agreed, making an approving noise in the back of his throat.

“After you,” he said, dragging open one of the enormous doors and bowing Louis ahead.

“No, mate” Louis said, “after you,” and he swept his arm out.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Niall, and he walked in, leaving Louis to skulk after him and almost get knocked over by the door ramming into the back of his legs.

Eyes watering, he staggered after Niall, and they approached the front desk, where an attractive man with huge Bambi eyes was standing in a suit. Louis looked him up and down with a practiced flick of his eyes, and noticed the man checking him out in return. Ordinarily he’d have followed this with some easy flirting, but although habit had caused him to eye up the guy, he was too jittery to take it any further. Instead, he managed a smile and said, “Table under the name of Niall Horan?”

A quick scan of the gilt-edged appointment book on his desk, and the man was saying, “Right this way, sirs,” leading them across the restaurant.

Nails biting into his palms, Louis followed.

He spotted Sarah quickly. She was dressed in a sparkly blue top, reading the menu with her teeth resting upon her bottom lip. There was something different about her hair, he thought she might have curled it, and her nails looked longer where they rested against the outside of the menu. She’d had a manicure. All of a sudden, Louis felt sick and wanted nothing more than to drag Niall out by the back of his jacket, spouting excuses. If his nausea continued this dramatic decline, he wouldn’t need them; he’d start projectile vomiting and have to be dragged bodily from the room by the fit waiter.

Too late. Sarah had seen them, glancing up from her menu and taking the three of them in, the suave waiter, Niall, with that easy grin, and Louis bringing up the rear looking like he’d just stepped off a ferry that had sailed through a hurricane. She waved, and Louis cringed; he saw Niall falter with confusion and closed his eyes for a moment. Niall turned to look over his shoulder, craning his neck to see who she was waving at, and spotted Louis’ greyish complexion.

“Who’s that weirdo? Hey, do you know her?”

“Er,” said Louis.

“Well it seems like she knows you.” Niall glanced sharply at the waiter. “We’re not going to end up sitting next to _her_ , are we?”

“Shhh,” hissed Louis.

The closer they grew to Sarah’s table, the more sick Louis felt, like he’d been playing a prank that he’d expected to be funny and had just begun to realize that it was actually quite cruel. Every few seconds Niall would give shifty looks to the waiter, whilst Louis brought up the rear and licked his lips so hard that they burned.

They reached the table, Sarah still beaming, and the waiter said, “Table nine, sir, under the name of Niall Horan?”

“Yes,” Niall and Sarah said together.

Immediately, Niall looked at her as if she’d dribbled on the tablecloth. Such was the intensity of his revulsion that Sarah faltered and looked at Louis, who had begun to examine his shoes with great interest so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. Shame burned like bourbon in his stomach.

“I’m sorry, there must be some mistake,” Niall said. “You’re sitting at our table.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We booked this table. I think you’re in the wrong place.”

“I don’t understand,” said Sarah.

“Well I don’t know how I can be a lot clearer about it,” Niall said a little sharply.

“Er,” said Louis. “Niall…”

He must have sounded as guilty as he felt; Niall rounded on him immediately, eyes blazing. “ _What_?”

“I, er…I haven’t been one hundred percent honest with you, mate…I didn’t bring you here to have a meal with me. I brought you here for a date. With her.”

At that point, the waiter took one look at Niall and Sarah’s expressions of furious embarrassment and fled, with a mumble about fetching menus. Louis envied him for being able to do it. Instead, he had to face their well-deserved wrath. The table had been elegantly set with three different kinds of fork, one of which Sarah was clutching so hard that her knuckles strained white against the skin. There was a glass of water in front of her that Louis fully expected to be wearing before the end of the conversation. He braced himself.

“You set me up? After I told you _specifically_ I didn’t want a girlfriend?” Niall thundered.

“You told me he was gagging for it!” said Sarah.

“LOUIS!” yelled Niall.

“In my defence,” said Louis, hands raised, “she is very pretty. I could have brought you a right munter.”

“I texted you,”Sarah said, pointing her fork accusingly at Niall. “You invited me here on a date.”

“I did no such thing!”

Seizing her handbag from beneath the table, Sarah rooted around in there for a minute and then withdrew her phone like she was unsheathing a sword. “Then whose phone number is this?” She waved her phone underneath his nose.

“Mine,” said Niall. “But I swear to god I have no idea who you are. What the fuck?”

“Actually, that was me,” said Louis. “I, ah… requisitioned his phone for a minute or two.”

Niall said a very bad word that had no place in such a fancy restaurant. Louis half expected the savoury doilies to go up in flames in protest. Pulling up an extra chair, Louis sat in it and then pulled the other chair back and patted the seat, indicating that Niall should sit. For a moment he stood with his hands on his hips, but courtesy won out - and possibly he took pity on Sarah, who was clearly mortified and staring shamefully into her water glass, or maybe he just didn’t want to make a scene in a fancy restaurant. Either way, he begrudgingly sat down and Louis poured them each a glass of water, stealing a spare glass from the next table and taking a casual sip.

“I don’t know how you could do this to me,” Sarah hissed. “I’m never going to forgive you for this. I’ve shown myself up in front of the entire restaurant and thrown myself at your mate when he’s clearly not interested. Is this your idea of a joke?”

“It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and this entire place is practically deserted,” Louis pointed out.

“You’re a prick,” said Niall. “What kind of friend steals his mate’s phone, organises a fake date with another mate, tells a pack of lies to the both of them and then throws them both together in a fancy restaurant when they don’t even know each other? You have some kind of problem, mate.”

“All right, I know, I’m a terrible bastard, I’m a liar, you both hate me, blah blah blah,” Louis said. “But this was a fucking expensive reservation, so are you bellends going to go on a date or not?”

“No!” they said furiously, and then looked at each other. Sarah flushed. Niall squirmed.

“It’s not that I don’t fancy you, you understand,” he said. “It’s just the principle of the thing, you know?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sarah, fiddling with the menu in its shiny leather case.

“Fine,” said Louis, and he whisked it out of her hands, opened it, and said briskly, “well it seems silly to waste our time and our reservation over a silly misunderstanding. So if you’re not going to go on a date, then we’re all going to have a meal as mates, all right? You can endure my company - and each other’s - for as long as it takes to force down as much Indian food as any of us can handle, and trust me, my stomach is a bottomless pit. I want poppadums and a couple of onion bhajis. Then I want saag balti and some boiled rice. What are you guys having?”

“Right, so first you trick us into going on a date and then you gatecrash it?” demanded Niall.

“That’s right,” said Louis. “Now where’s that waiter?” He leaned back in his chair, rocking it onto its two back legs, casting an expert glance around the room to try and pick out a glimpse of that crisp black suit.

An enraged silence ensued. Niall gave Louis murderous looks; Louis grinned back at him with a flick of his eyebrows and lifted the menu in front of his face so that he could watch the two of them without being noticed. Sarah’s eyes kept darting to Niall and away again as though afraid to be caught looking, a light flush colouring her cheeks. Every few seconds she would fiddle with the array of knives and forks laid out in front of her, or take a sip of her water, then refill it. The jug was beginning to look alarmingly empty. Louis just waited, eyes skittering smugly over the menu. As an actor, he well knew the effect of an uncomfortable pause.

“Fine!” Niall exploded, making them all jump; Louis dropped the menu and it hit the table with a slap. “We’ll go on a fucking date.” He glanced apologetically at Sarah. “I’m sorry, he’ll never give it a rest if we don’t. And if he doesn’t leave in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to murder him, and that would put me off my lunch. And I really am in the mood for a rogan josh.” Affixing Louis with a look that promised certain death, he said, “you’re paying.”

Louis laughed. “No I’m not.” Getting up, he tucked the chair back underneath the table, radiating smugness like a cat curled up in someone else’s chair. “Have fun, kiddies. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Go fuck yourself, Louis,” Niall said without heat.

As he ambled towards the door of the restaurant, Louis blew him a kiss.

                                                       ~*~

It was approaching early evening when Louis nipped out for a fag, one hand cupped around the cigarette clamped between his teeth, trying futilely to light it in spite of the wind that fought to extinguish the flame from his lighter. The breeze played with his hair, wisps of caramel dancing in the wind. The cigarette wouldn’t light; cursing, Louis shook the lighter.

The flame caught, leaping high, a streak of yellow, and then the tip of his cigarette glowed cherry red and he grunted with satisfaction, taking a deep drag. Tapping the ash onto the ground, where a mess of stubs and burnt twists of rolling papers littered the ground. Ugly, he thought, a testament to the disgustingness of the habit. No nicotine stained fingers or pretty puffs of smoke into the air for him today, no false illusions. Just dirty cigarette ends in the gutter.

He looked up, plucked the cigarette from between his lips and exhaled, and that was when he spotted Niall coming down the road, fists clenched and head down, buffeted by the wind. From that distance, Louis couldn’t see his expression; he had no hope of figuring out how pissed off Niall was from that kind of proximity. Besides which, even if Niall didn’t want to murder him, it was so blowy that they’d only end up yelling at each other anyway, or else they’d never hear a word of what the other was saying.

Sighing, Louis took one last long drag on his cigarette, trying to smoke as much of it as he could in one go, the heat filling his lungs and making his chest slightly tight. Then, he stubbed it out on the wall, leaving a sooty smudge like a dirty fingerprint, and flicked the stub away, where it lay still glowing on the ground. Turning his back on it, Louis went back inside.

Running back up to his room, he tried to make himself look presentable so that it wouldn’t be obvious he’d been lingering outside like a creeper, watching for Niall’s return. There was a weird tension in his belly that wouldn’t let him rest; pacing up and down, he tapped his fingers restlessly, swayed from side to side, and relentlessly checked his phone every thirty seconds or so, waiting for a decent amount of time to elapse.

Eight minutes passed. Louis heard, very far away, drifting up the stairs, the sound of the front door being opened - or at least, he thought he did; he was so wound up he might well have imagined it. Gritting his teeth, he sat on the bed, grabbed a textbook and opened it, then threw it back down again in disgust. He wasn’t that desperate.

After biding his time for three and a half more minutes, Louis gave up and shoved his way through the wardrobe into Niall’s room.

“Niall!”

The room was empty, just how Niall had left it - yesterday’s clothes in a mound on the floor, deodorant cans scattered across the bedside table, an open can of lager sat on the side. Disgusting. The room smelt of McDonald’s fries and dirty socks, and Niall was decidedly not in it. Not lounging on his unmade bed, not hunched over his desk, not cross-legged on the floor strumming his guitar. Louis burst into his tiny bathroom, but Niall wasn’t in there either. Frowning, Louis scratched his head. Where else could he be?

Then, it dawned on him.

                                                         ~*~

“Niall!”

Louis exploded into the kitchen like a hurricane; Niall whipped around, cheeks bulging, holding half of an enormous sandwich, and attempted to speak, spraying crumbs everywhere. Disgusted, Louis leapt back.

“Ugh, how can you fit so much in your mouth, that’s disgusting. It’s a shame you’re not gay, with a gob like that. How can you possibly still be hungry? You’ve just been stuffing your face at an Indian restaurant, you pig.”

“Have you seen the menu? I could barely afford to fucking breathe in there, and then I had to pay for Sarah’s meal as well as my own. I almost ended up eating off the kiddie menu.”

“Well as long as you didn’t make _her_ eat off the kiddie menu. How did it go? Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

For a moment, Niall looked distinctly unimpressed. Putting his sandwich down, he put his hands on his hips and gave Louis the kind of look a mother gave a teenage boy’s bedroom, looking straight down his nose.

He only managed to hold it for a second; then, he looked away and sniffed, “It was all right.”

“You liked her!” Louis said gleefully.

“Yeah, and she liked me, which is  fucking miracle considering what a twat I was to her at the start - you could have given me some warning, Louis, instead of letting me treat her like a nutter. And what was it you told her about me getting eaten by an alsatian?”

“Oh, that,” Louis said dismissively. “Just a bit of embellishment, you know. Come on, I want details. Did you snog?”

“We did not snog!”

“Why didn’t you snog? Now she’s going to think you don’t fancy her! Fuck’s sake, Niall!”

“Not everyone likes shoving their tongue down someone else’s throat on the first date,” Niall said with dignity. “Some people like to be wined and dined first. Besides, we spent the first half of it hardly talking to each other, we were so embarrassed. You’re a fucking twat. You ever pull a stunt like that on me again, and I’ll kill you.”

Louis shrugged, unruffled. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say that. We had a good time, but neither of us appreciated being tricked into going on a date.”

“That was just the means to an end. The means, a couple of teeny white lies. The end - you get a super hot girlfriend. I figured it was worth the risk.” After a moment, Louis said slyly, “Are you going to see her again?”

“I might,” Niall said nonchalantly.

“Fucking knew it,” said Louis. “Oh, this is just too good. Perrie owes me a tenner.”

“Wait, Perrie was in on this?”

“Perrie is my partner in crime,” Louis said grandly. Then, at the look on his face, “But I should probably mention that she told me it was a spectacularly bad idea and that when she helped me come up with this dastardly plan she was half asleep and hungover.”

“I hate you both.”

“Pfft,” said Louis. “You can’t possibly hate me.”

Niall opened his mouth to argue, and then Harry came into the kitchen, holding an enormous mug.

He hadn’t thought much of it until that point, but seeing him brought the memory of their last conversation sharply into focus at the forefront of Louis’ mind. A flash of anger. A shudder running up the glass that he had slammed down on the worktop. Harry, leaping away from him as though he were diseased. Point blank refusing to be friends, with no explanation. And freshly throbbing was the hurt Louis had felt at this rejection, and the disgust he felt that it was still bothering him.

Immediately, Louis turned to glare at Harry, throwing him a look as black as pitch. Faltering, Harry drew back, then lifted his chin and marched over to the sink. All the while, Louis watched him with a dark look on his face, whilst Niall frowned at him, looking from Harry to Louis with a cleft between his eyebrows.

The silence was painful. Harry stayed with his head held high, determinedly not looking at either of them. Meanwhile, Louis drummed his fingers on the tabletop in an irritating rhythm. Realizing that he was glowering at a spot between Harry’s shoulder-blades, he looked down at the table and drummed his fingers more intensely. Harry finished washing his mug, left it upside-down on the draining board, and walked out with his lips pressed together.

“What was all that about?”

“Nothing,” said Louis. “He’s just a massive tosser.”

“What did he do?”

“He’s a prick!” Louis exploded. “He blows hot and cold every ten minutes! One minute he’s giving me bedroom eyes and biting his lips all over the place, the next minute he’s fucking me off and saying he can’t talk to me! He thinks he’s Edward Cullen.” He lowered his voice to a husky drawl. “ _I can’t be friends with you, Louis_. Ha! Tosser. I bet it’s because I’m gay.”

“You know,” Niall said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure that it is. Because I was talking to Leigh-Anne earlier, she’s spoken to him as well, and she said he was a bit…odd.”

“…Odd how?”

“Well, he was in the kitchen, making fajitas, and apparently he realized he’d forgotten some of the ingredients. Or he thought he’d forgotten some of the ingredients, I think actually we ate some of them when we were too drunk to read the sticky labels with his name on them -”

“Focus, Niall.”

“Right. Sorry. So he’d forgotten some of the ingredients, and Leigh-Anne had just nipped to the shop, so she lent him some peppers and an onion and helped him cook it all, and she said he was really nice, dead friendly, polite, everything. She said they got on really well. And they ate together, and talked, it was all going great until they were clearing up and she asked him if he wanted to come hang out with her and Jesy later. And all of a sudden, he like, freaks out, and starts stammering and making loads of shite excuses, and then he completely scarpers! And leaves Leigh to do all the washing up. Which is both rude and sexist. But she doesn’t think he planned it, because he’d already got a pair of rubber gloves on.”

“He just buggered off and left her to do the washing up?” Louis said indignantly.

“Yeah, but like I said, I don’t think that was the idea, like. Apparently he just freaked out and left, she couldn’t figure out what she’d done. I reckon he has some kind of personality disorder,” Niall said.

“Nah. You think?”

“Yeah, or like, social anxiety or something. Because one of my cousins, she’s fine meeting people one on one - dead chatty. Lovely girl. But the second you put her in a group of people, she has, like a fucking meltdown. Her brain can’t take it. She just turns into soup, starts crying.”

“He does always run off whenever we invite him to something…” Louis mused.

Niall lolled back in his chair with a triumphant nod.

“But he doesn’t act anxious,” Louis said. “Shouldn’t he be having panic attacks or shaking or something?”

“Maybe he runs off before it starts. I don’t think it’s something you’d want people seeing.”

“I guess…I dunno, I just feel like there’s more to it.”

“Uh-oh,” said Niall. “Don’t go going all Detective Louis on me. Just leave the guy alone, it’s no skin off our noses if he wants to hide in his room all day.”

Louis had gone silent. His brain was whirring away, already cooking up schemes, having furious imaginary arguments in his head with Harry, in which he demanded to know what his issue was, whilst Harry made arrogant replies and ran his fingers through his hair every now and then. Most of all, he wanted to figure it all out. There was already an itch underneath his skin urging him to find out more; to interrogate Leigh and get her to recount her entire conversation with Harry, verbatim; to find out where Harry disappeared to; to bang on his door, shouting profanities until he came out and started shouting back…

“Earth to Louis!” Niall rapped his knuckles on the side of Louis’ head.

“Huh? What?”

“Jesus.” Niall shook his head. “You really do have a thing for this guy, don’t you?”

Louis snorted contemptuously. It was a good snort; full of derision. “‘Course not. I just want to know what his problem is, that’s all.”

“His problem is not our problem. You know what is our problem? All that fucking weed you hid underneath his floorboards. You’re gonna wanna go back and dig that out; as soon as they turn the central heating on, his whole room is gonna stink like a couple of teenagers at a rock festival. You ever notice how weed kind of smells like old sweat? Imagine that, times a hundred, drifting up from underneath your bathroom floorboards.”

“Shit,” Louis said. “I never thought about that.”

“Yeah, and he’s gonna be high as a kite off the fumes, and if it gets damp under there then that’s over a hundred quid’s worth of weed wasted on a fucking up-his-arse Law student with an anxiety problem. Maybe you should focus on getting the weed back rather than getting Harry to stick around long enough for you to fuck him.”

“What? I don’t want to fuck him!”

Niall gave him a look.

“All right, I sort of want to fuck him,” Louis admitted begrudgingly. “But not as much as I wanna pull that stick out of his arse and see him get wasted. Let’s see how much of a sanctimonious prick he’d be with a couple of double vodka and cokes and an eighth of weed inside of him.”

“You do whatever the fuck you want,” said Niall, heading to the fridge and pulling out a bottle of milk, “but if he’s getting high off my weed, you’re fucking paying for it.”

And, well. Louis couldn’t say fairer than that. It was damn good weed. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to pay for that much weed to go to waste, rotting away under some twat’s floorboards, Harry getting high for free off Louis’ weed fumes.

“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll get it back.”

“You’d better,” said Niall. “Because the longer you leave it, the harder it’s going to get.”

Without responding, Louis clenched his fists. Relishing the flash burn of his anger, feeding the flames, he steeled himself. Harry wasn’t going to sit on Louis’ weed for even a second longer.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really not sure about the pacing on this chapter, but you're here for Larry, so it's about time I gave you all some Larry! Let me know your thoughts, I love getting feedback from you guys.
> 
> Trigger warning for panic attacks, anxiety, and mild self harm mentions (a character mentions wanting to bang their head against a wall.)

“Oi! Come out, I know you’re in there! Come out here!”

Pounding on the door with his fist, Louis was just about ready to stop yelling. He was almost certain at this point that Harry wasn’t in his room; several other people had poked their heads out to grumble at him for making so much noise, but Harry’s door stayed resolutely closed, quivering slightly as he pummelled the wood. If Harry was in there, he had the patience of a saint. If someone had banged on Louis’ door like that, he would have burst out and ripped their head off several minutes ago. The knocking was beginning to hurt his knuckles; the skin shone pink with abuse. Flexing his fingers, Louis prepared for one last colossal whack, just to vent his feelings.

Even before he’d started knocking, he was pretty sure Harry wasn’t in there, but he wanted to make sure the room was empty before he blundered in and started pulling up floorboards. He couldn’t quite remember which board he’d hidden the weed under; he’d been hazy with alcohol at the time. It could take a while of rummaging around in the bathroom, and the last thing he wanted was for Harry to see him emerging from his bathroom with five bags of weed shoved up his shirt.

Drawing his arm back, Louis gave the door a final, almighty whack; the door shuddered and pain shot through his hand, sharp and fierce like he’d put his hand to a hot stove. Hissing, Louis spun around, clutching his hand, and then the door open and Harry stuck his head out, bright red in the face.

“What do you want?”

“Aha!” said Louis. “I _knew_ you were in there!”

“Are you _trying_ to break my door down?”

“It’s a good door,” Louis said. “Sturdy.”

“Clearly. What do you want, Louis?”

“Er…” Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. Nowhere in his plan had he considered that Harry might actually open the door, that he might need a reason for trying to break it down. “Why didn’t you open up the first time?” he demanded.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Harry said, “I was _trying_ to study.” He closed his eyes and took a very slow breath.

“Jesus,” said Louis. “Have you even had a lecture yet? No offence, but you need to get a life, mate.”

Harry’s eyes snapped open, and they had darkened, like storm clouds had gathered behind the irises. “Louis. What. Do. You. Want?”

“I wanted…to tell you that…that you’re…”

Harry was still glaring at him.

“You’re a _massive wanker_!” Louis said.

All the anger shrunk out of Harry like a balloon deflating, replaced by complete and utter bewilderment. “What?”

“You heard!” Louis said dramatically. “You’re a tosser! A prat! A complete and utter dickhead!”

“You almost broke my door down just so that you could insult me to my face, and _I’m_ the wanker?” said Harry, with great bewilderment.

“You’re rude as fuck!” Louis said, ignoring him. “You left Leigh-Anne to do all the washing up, you turn down every invitation you get to anything, you act all nice and then suddenly turn into a nun whenever we ask you to do something fun…what are you really doing in there? Making meth? There’s no way you can be studying already, lectures haven’t even begun.”

“Come in!” shouted Harry, throwing the door open and stepping back to let Louis past.

Louis blinked. There was such a contrast between Harry’s words and his tone that he was sure he must have misheard. Something had gotten jumbled up on the way to his brain.

“Eh?” he said warily.

“Come in and look at all the meth I’m not making, Walter White. Or would you rather come bursting out of my wardrobe and scaring the shit out of me? Are ordinary doors too boring for you, now?”

“I’m coming,” Louis snapped, and he marched over the threshold.

Sure enough, it did appear that Harry had been studying. Several textbooks were laid open on his bed, covered in several different coloured highlighters. There was a huge mind map hanging on one wall, covered in spidery handwriting. The room smelt even more like a Lush factory than it had during Louis’ first visit, and Harry had strung up a selection of Polaroid photos over the bed, above the window, pegged to a piece of string. Louis was too far away to make the pictures out clearly, but he could see Harry in them, and could also see that he was not alone.

“Oh, so you aren’t allergic to human contact,” Louis said acidly. “I was beginning to wonder. It’s personal, then, yeah? You too good to be friends with us lowly peasants, law boy?”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Harry said wearily. “Why  does everything with you have to be taken to extremes? If we’re not flirting, we’re hurling insults. It seems like you either want me to be your best friend or your arch nemesis; there can’t be anything in between.”

“It was you who said you didn’t want to be friends, not me.”

“I said we couldn’t be friends, not that I didn’t want to be.”

“All right, Edward Cullen, so why can’t we? Is it because I’m gay?”

Harry barked a laugh; his whole face lit up, dazzling Louis for a split second before it was gone again, and he was left with a strange feeling of emptiness, like the blank stretch of smokey sky after a fireworks display.

“Really? You’re asking _me_ if I mind that you’re gay? I’ve been out since I was _eleven._ Sexuality has nothing to do with it.”

“What, then?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“You’re already trying me. My patience is wearing extremely thin, Louis.”

“God, you’re annoying,” said Louis. “Let’s make out.”

Incredulity wiped Harry’s face clear. “What?”

“I’m estimating that we have approximately ten seconds before Dickhead Harry comes out from wherever you’ve hidden him, so come on, let’s make the most of it, come here -” and he put an arm around Harry’s waist and jerked him forwards, their foreheads touching.

Harry tried not to laugh and failed. “You’re impossible.”

“And yet you find it so attractive.”

“Louis…”

Their mouths were inches away from touching. Harry’s hair tickled Louis’ forehead. He closed his eyes…

Harry’s lips were impossibly soft as they moved with his, gentle and yet unforgiving. The kiss was deep and slow, and then time seemed to catch up with them and everything sped up; Harry leaned forwards, dipping Louis slightly; Louis’ hands roamed across his back, fingers twisting in the fabric of Harry’s jumper, one hand splayed across the base of his back for balance… Harry stroked Louis’ cheek with his thumb, and Louis clung to him, breathing him in.

When they resurfaced to breathe, they were gasping like drowning men who had just been pulled out of the water. Louis’ heart was pounding in his chest, impossibly hot and light, like a hot air balloon. He felt like he might just float away, and take Harry with him.

Leaning back a little, Louis studied his handiwork with a smirk. Harry was prettily flushed, his lower lip swollen, and his pupils blown the size of dinner plates. Underneath Louis’ wandering hands, he shook like an exhausted racehorse, feverishly hot. His legs trembled.

_Still got it,_ Louis thought.

“Louis,” Harry said again, but this time it sounded like a plea.

Louis caught Harry’s mouth with his own again, silencing him, drawing him close. He pushed on Harry’s chest, maneuvering him backwards until the backs of his knees hit the bed and he fell back with a cry of surprise, his hair sprayed across the pillow like a dark waterfall. Louis pounced on him, kissing him harder, silky curls running through his fingers, and when Harry reached up to play with his hair in return, Louis grabbed his wrist and held it down. The frantic butterfly of Harry’s pulse thrummed underneath his fingers. Louis gave a hum of satisfaction.

“Louis,” Harry said, breaking away, so Louis began to ravage his neck instead. “Louis, stop!”

Immediately, Louis sat up and released the pressure on Harry’s wrists but he gave a whine of disappointment.

“Is Dickhead Harry back already? Things were just getting interesting.”

“Louis, we can’t do this, I told you -”

“Why? Don’t you want to?”

“I -”

“Because it seems like you wanted to,” Louis said, with a playful smile.

“Well, yeah, all right, but it’s not as simple as that, we can’t just -”

A knock on the door interrupted him mid-sentence. Louis frowned. All the colour had drained from Harry’s face; he looked as though he had been slapped.

“Looks like everybody wants you today,” Louis commented.

“Shhh!” Harry hissed. He shoved Louis off him with ungratifying ease, sending him rolling onto the floor with a thump.

“Oi!” Louis said indignantly, but Harry was already shepherding him towards the wardrobe, hissing “shh, shh!”

“Get in!” he whispered, bundling Louis inside.

“Wait, you can’t just -”

“Shush!” begged Harry, and he closed the wardrobe doors in Louis’ face.

Outraged, Louis pressed his nose against the crack between the doors. He heard Harry’s bedroom door open, and a rumble of voices. Pressing his ear against the gap, he held his breath, listening.

“…Just thought I’d see how you’re settling in,” said an unfamiliar voice. It was a strange voice, smooth, but with a slightly mocking edge to it; bitter like mocha. “Studying hard, I see?”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to do things right this year,” replied Harry. “All work and no play -”

“Makes Harry a successful lawyer, yeah, yeah,” the voice said boredly. “Although it’s funny, because I could have sworn I heard voices just now.”

There was a tiny pause. “Oh, that was me,” said Harry. “I like to read my notes out loud. Helps them stick in my head, you know.”

“I’m sure. But I’m also sure I heard more than one voice.”

Something rustled near the wardrobe doors. Louis pressed his ear harder against the gap; the wardrobe doors creaked, and opened a crack. A shadow fell across the doors, blocking out the thin strip of light that was his only illumination; Louis pressed his eye to the gap, frowning, and then the doors slammed shut, clipping the tip of his nose. His eyes watered; he had to bite down hard on his lower lip to keep from yelling.

“Problem?”

“Yeah, I think the doors on this wardrobe are a bit dodgy, they don’t close properly,” Harry said. Louis wished he could see his face. “And that was me. I do loads of different voices. Helps me remember things better.” Clearing his throat, he said in a squeaky falsetto, “ _Modus operandi; a particular way of doing something, or method of operation_.”

Louis scowled and resolved to give Harry a smack around the back of the head as soon as he let him out of the damn wardrobe; he did _not_ sound like that. He tried rattling the doors to make his displeasure known, but something was pressed against them, keeping them firmly closed. It appeared that Harry was leaning against the doors.

“Right,” said the voice, slowly. “And you never thought about trying flashcards?”

“It’s very time consuming, writing them out.”

“True. Well, young Harry, I thought I’d better pop in, just to see how you’re getting on…make sure no one’s been leading you astray…”

“I haven’t put so much as a toenail out of line,” Harry promised.

“Make sure it stays that way.” There was a creak, and the pressure came off the wardrobe doors. “I’ll be nipping round from time to time…”

Louis raised his eyebrows.

There were a few more mumbles, and then a clunk as the door shut. Huffing, Louis pushed open the wardrobe door and started crawling out, but Harry shook his head.

“He’s still outside!” he mouthed.

Rolling his eyes, Louis waited, head poking comically out of the wardrobe.

When Harry finally let out the breath he’d been holding and motioned for Louis to come out, Louis shook his head, pushing himself up from his hands and knees. “Honestly. I thought I was supposed to be the drama queen,” he said, making a show of dusting himself down. “Who was that, anyway? Creepy boyfriend? Creepy _ex_ boyfriend?” He gasped theatrically. “Is he your _sugar daddy_?”

“That was Mike,” Harry said distantly. “He’s a friend of my parents.”

“Oh, so he’s the creepy uncle. That explains a lot.”

“You need to leave.”

“What? I was only joking, he’s not _that_ creepy - ”

“Out, Louis.”

Louis blinked at him, feeling like he’d been kicked.

“This was a mistake,” Harry said, with the air of someone attempting to remove a splinter. Digging around in the wound with a needle. Walking over to the door, he opened it, and stood by it, refusing to look at him, as though Louis were a disgusting scene on a television programme that he didn’t want to watch. “Just go. Please.”

For a moment, Louis struggled for something witty and cutting to say, but drew a blank. Heat rose to his face. Meanwhile, Harry stood holding the door open with an almost aggressively polite look on his face, as though it were Louis who had committed an atrocious social faux pas and was being completely unreasonable by lingering in his dorm room.

Finally, when Louis’ pride would not stand a second longer of him standing gormlessly around, opening and shutting his mouth like a cheap puppet, he withdrew, nose in the air, and stepped out into the corridor. The door closed promptly behind him, with a conclusive thunk.

For a moment, Louis was so angry that he did not dare to move for fear that he would be overwhelmed by a mounting urge to kick the wall. Closing his eyes, he stood very still until some of the angry tremors had subsided, and only his hands were still shaking slightly with suppressed rage. Then, he stalked down the corridor and let himself into his room.

As soon as Louis was safely in his dorm room, he took a deep breath, and screamed “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” at the top of his lungs.

His throat like sandpaper, rubbed raw from yelling so loud and for so long, Louis then walked over to his bed and punched the pillow. That was nowhere near satisfying enough, so he pulled it off the bed, swung it over his head and began beating it against the wall, yelling.

He pummelled the wall until his hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat, and his arms were starting to ache. Then, panting, he dropped the pillow, took a deep breath and clambered through the wardrobe, into Niall’s room.

Niall was sat on his bed, playing the guitar. The lights were dimmed, and he was strumming the same soothing chords over and over again. The whole atmosphere of the room was so calm that it made Louis want to start punching things again. It was like walking into a dorm room belonging to the fucking Dalai Lama. Louis gave Niall the filthiest look he was capable of.

“Bad day?” Niall asked.

“Go fuck yourself,” Louis said, and started fumbling around on the floor looking for the loose floorboard that Niall kept his vodka underneath.

“You look like you need some weed,” said Niall. “

"Ha ha, hilarious,” Louis said sourly, sitting down on the bed and unscrewing the vodka bottle.

“Go on then, what happened this time? Did he distract you by talking r-e-a-l-l-y  s-l-o-w-l-y?”

Scowling, Louis recounted the whole sorry story - including, a little reluctantly, the part where he’d pounced and snogged Harry’s face off.

“Louis,” said Niall once it was over, “I hate to say this, but you need to get a life.”

“I know, he’s such an - eh?”

“All this mooning after Harry can’t be good for your blood pressure. You’re all red, look.”

“That’s from when I was hitting the wall,” Louis said with dignity.

Niall made a gesture as if to say ‘exactly’. “Listen, mate, you need to forget about him. It’s the age old story - he’s unattainable, he’s moody, he’s your manic pixie dream boy, blah blah blah… but he’s just a guy, and he’s not even that attractive.”

“Excuse you!” said Louis.

“All right, he’s sort of attractive,” Niall allowed. “But he’s so antisocial! What do you think would happen if you did get with him? You’d be sat in all the time watching Netflix, and there’s only so long you can spend on Netflix before you end up watching crap episodes of Pingu. They _ruined_ Pingu. Don’t put yourself through that, Louis.” He put down the guitar, reached over and plucked the bottle of vodka from Louis’ hands, screwing the top back on. “Listen, one of the guys on my music course is bi, and he’s all right. He’s got good teeth. Let me set you up with him.”

“Oh, sure thing, Niall, I’ll let you set me up with some stranger on your music course,” said Louis, “because we all know how well that worked out when I did it to you. He’s got good teeth? Yeah, that’s an amazing selling point. How can I possibly resist that? What a catch.”

“Worked out all right for me, didn’t it?”

“Can’t have worked out that well,” Louis said a little nastily, “you’re still a virgin, aren’t you?”

Niall looked like he’d swallowed a whole lemon, and got it lodged in his throat. Turning away from Louis, he started mutinously unscrewing the cap of the vodka bottle again.

“Exactly,” said Louis.

~*~

For the next week, Niall kept his mouth shut about Harry, no matter how much Louis ranted and raved about him: he didn’t tell Louis to get a life, or call him a creep, or even ask when he was going to have another go at getting the weed back. However, Louis knew that this was only because if he ever tried, Louis would start badgering him to message Sarah and making slightly cruel comments about his intact virginity. Apparently Niall considered this to be enough to buy his silence, for now at least. Perrie had only just stopped bringing droves of girls into the flat and trying to persuade Niall to date one, if not all of them, and they both knew that this was only because she thought he was involved with someone already. If Perrie got so much as an inkling that Sarah’s number had been gathering dust in Niall’s phone since their slightly disastrous date, then the consequences would not be pretty. As confused as Louis was about Niall’s continued avoidance of a girl he admitted he liked, he was willing to keep quiet about it for as long as Niall was willing to listen to him complain about the hot law student down the hallway.

It quickly became clear that Harry had gone from ignoring Louis to going out of his way to avoid him. At first, Louis thought it was just a coincidence that Harry would disappear from a room whenever he entered it; then, one evening, Harry walked into the kitchen, spotted Louis sat at the table eating ravioli, and walked straight out again, backwards.

Determined not to be outdone, Louis resolved to avoid Harry even more aggressively than Harry was avoiding him. He did this by pacing up and down the corridor outside Harry’s room several times a day, waiting for him to emerge, and as soon as he did, Louis would spin around and storm off in the opposite direction with his nose in the air, usually adding a haughty ‘hmph’ for emphasis. However, one time, this backfired on him, when he didn’t hear Harry coming out of his room, and Louis turned around to start pacing back down the hallway, and walked straight into him. This incident was so mortifying that it took a large tub of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream and silently watching three Marvel movies on Liam’s laptop before he stopped wanting to bang his head against the wall.

“We’re staging an intervention,” Liam said one evening.

They were crammed into Perrie’s room on the floor below, like sardines in a tin. Jesy was painting her toenails, her foot resting on Perrie’s desk, whilst Perrie’s fingers danced across the screen of her phone; she’d been glued to it for several days. Liam, Niall and Jade were all looking at Louis with expressions of great sympathy, as though about to tell him that he had a drug problem and needed to go to rehab.

“I don’t need an intervention,” said Louis.

“Louis. I’m gonna estimate that you’ve mentioned Harry eight times in the past ten minutes, and you haven’t even spoken to him in a week.”

“Only to say how much of a tosser he is,” Louis said indignantly.

“If he’s so much of a tosser, then why can’t you shut the fuck up about him?” asked Jesy.

“I can,” Louis said. “I will.”

There was a short pause, where the only sound was Niall popping gum and Jesy filing her nails, a sound that made Louis cringe.

“Anyway, I don’t talk about him _that_ much,” Louis said, and they all groaned.

“You need help!”

“We’re here for you, Louis,” Liam said, taking his hand and looking at him with wide eyes.

“We love you,” promised Jade, patting his knee. “You’ll get through this.”

“You’re all wankers,” Louis said.

“Oi!” Perrie bellowed, making them all jump. “I’ve done it!”

“What? Did you finally beat Leigh’s high score on candy crush?” asked Jade.

“No,” said Perrie scornfully, “better than that. I’ve got Louis a boyfriend.”

Louis inhaled half a mug of tea and had to be pounded on the back by Niall as he tried not to drown in his own brew, which felt like it was scalding his lungs.

“You what?” he demanded.

“I know,” Perrie said. “I’m a genius, you owe me your life, I’m your favourite person ever, yadda yadda yadda. Look.”

She thrust her phone underneath Louis’ nose, showing him the tinder profile of a man with dark hair and angled cheekbones, holding one excessively hairy arm up and clenching his muscles.

“How good am I?”

“Let me see that,” Louis snapped, snatching the phone.

A few quick taps brought him to Perrie’s own tinder profile - except it _wasn’t_ Perrie’s profile. The photograph was of Louis, quite clearly drunk, beaming and pointing off into space with a beer in his hand. His description read “Louis, 20. Drama Student. Just call me Twinkerbell ;) ” and a long line of emojis. Feeling murderous, Louis glared up at Perrie, who was beaming, just as the phone vibrated in his hand. He almost dropped it in his shock.

“Ooh, give that here!” said Perrie, snatching the phone back. She started typing manically, an evil gleam in her eye. Louis stared at her; it was beginning to dawn on him that Perrie was actually an evil mastermind masquerading as a cute blonde.

“Ooh, he’s a saucy one, this one!” said Perrie. “All right, I’ve never gay sexted anyone before, does this sound all right? _I’d stretch myself open, fucking myself on my fingers and moaning for you, while I swirl my tongue around the head of your pulsating co_ \- ”

“No!” Louis bellowed, as Niall roared with laughter. “Absolutely not.”

“All right,” said Perrie, “ _your throbbing member_.”

“No one’s member is throbbing!” snapped Louis.

“I dunno, I think his might be, he sent me a dick pic a couple of messages back, look - ”

“No,” said Louis, determinedly averting his gaze from the screen. “Stop sexting people! You can’t just go around catfishing people and pretending to be me!”

“I’m not catfishing him,” said Perrie, looking offended, “I’m not pretending to be an imaginary person!”

“No, you’re pretending to be me - and since when did I ask people to call me Twinkerbell?”

Niall snickered.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you have to admit that was funny.”

“Go text Sarah,” snapped Louis, and the grin slid off Niall’s face in an instant.

“Oh, come on, Louis, give him a chance,” Perrie wheedled. “He’s a lovely guy, he’s got a really nice cat, look - ”

“I don’t care what sort of cat he’s got, I’m not meeting someone off tinder that you’ve set me up with. Delete that app right now, or so help me God - ”

“You lost him when you mentioned the cat,” Liam said sadly. “I thought we already established that Louis isn’t into pussy.”

They all cracked up, except Louis, who was contemplating committing mass human sacrifice and possibly arson.

“Perrie,” Louis said, “I love you, and I know you’re only trying to help, but for the love of god, stop trying to set me up with strangers!”

“Yeah, Louis, that sounds horrible,” said Niall. “I feel really bad for you.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Louis.

~*~

Sprinting back from a lecture in the rain, with water running down his back and face, Louis exploded through the doors of the flat and shook himself like a dog, showering water everywhere. Making a mental note to buy an umbrella, he looked down at his sopping wet shoes and walked a few squelchy steps, before breaking into a run. It was too cold to dawdle; his nipples were poking through his shirt like two frozen peas.

Dashing up the stairs, Louis was wheezing like an asthmatic when he reached the second floor and tripped over a dark shape hunched over at the top of the stairs.

Louis hit the floor with a smack, leaving a shiny, Louis-shaped wet patch on the linoleum. Pain burst through his knee, which had caught the edge of the bottom step, and he almost rolled straight back down the stairs again; it was only by luck that he fell forwards rather than backwards and lay on the landing, chanting every swear-word he knew whilst gripping his knee, which felt as though it might fall off if he didn’t hold onto it. Tears blurred his vision.

When the pain finally abated to a low throbbing, Louis sat up and glowered at the obstruction that he had tripped on. He could just about make out a tangle of dark hair through the tears in his eyes.

“Well that was a pretty stupid place to sit, wasn’t it? Nearly killed myself falling over you, you great pillock - oi, are you all right?”

He realized that the person was curled up into a ball, knees drawn up to their chest, arms wrapped around their knees, and was rocking back and forth, making horrible choking noises. Their breathing dragged like feet on gravel, shallow and ragged. Louis dropped down to their level and realized that it was Harry, staring straight ahead with wild eyes, an animal caught in a trap - yet he seemed unable to focus. Louis crouched in front of him, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed that he was there. His cheeks were wet.

“Shit, Harry, can you hear me? Harry? What’s wrong, are you hurt? Look at me!”

Harry choked and breathed in, with a rattle like a broken engine. “I can’t breathe,” he said, and his hands started fumbling, found Louis’ wrists and clung to them so hard that it hurt a little. “I can’t - help me - I can’t breathe, I can’t - ”

“Calm down,” Louis ordered. “Do you have asthma?”

“No, no, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t - ”

“You’re okay,” Louis promised, “you’re going to be fine, just look at me - focus on me, Harry, okay? Look at me. Look at me!”

Harry looked up, shaking violently.

“You’re going to be fine. We’re going to count down from ten - look at me, like that, keep your eyes on me - we’re going to count backwards from ten, and you’re going to try and breathe as we count, yeah?”

“I can’t,” whimpered Harry, “I can’t breathe, I can’t - I don’t know what’s happening - ”

“You’re okay, I promise, I’m not going to leave you. Everything is going to be fine. Count with me, come on. Ten…nine…eight…”

When they got to zero, Harry seemed to have stopped crying, but he was still trembling, his breath coming in short rasps, like he couldn’t keep hold of them. It was like trying to inflate a punctured tyre; the air kept escaping. His grip on Louis’ hand was tight enough that his fingers were already beginning to feel clumsy and numb, but he didn’t let go.

“Any better?”

Harry shook his head frantically.

“Okay,” Louis said. “Count from ten again. Try to breathe in and out as we count, okay? I’ll do it too, look - ten - ” and he took a deep, exaggerated breath. “Nine.” He puffed out, the way he used to when he was reading _The Three Little Pigs_ to his sisters and was pretending to be the wolf. “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!” said Louis, huffing three times in rapid succession.

Harry managed a sort of panicky half-laugh. Louis squeezed his hand encouragingly.

“There we go, come on, you’re going to be all right…keep counting…”

They had to count down from ten three or four more times, but after the fourth countdown, Harry was breathing fairly evenly again, and most of the tremors had gone from his hands. Closing his eyes, he leaned against the wall, a sheen of sweat shining on his skin like the glare from stage lights. Louis gently disentangled his fingers from Harry’s.

“All right?” he said.

Harry nodded.

Sitting on the step beside him, Louis stayed quiet for a few minutes, waiting until he was fairly certain that Harry wasn’t going to pass out and fall down the stairs, he got to his feet.

“I know what’ll help you feel better,” he said. “Come on.”

Harry looked wearily up at him. “I’m not really in the mood for drinking right now.”

“No alcohol involved,” Louis promised. “Scout’s honour.”

“No way were you a boy scout.”

“I so was! I was a scout for precisely two months, and then they kicked me out for being a troublemaker. They were teaching us to tie knots, so I tied this kid to a chair. I was a bit too good at it; they had to cut him out of it.” He held out his hand. “Come on. This’ll help, I promise.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Harry took it and let Louis pull him to his feet.

~*~

It took Louis several minutes of bustling around the kitchen, rattling saucepans and raiding the cupboards to find the biggest mug he could lay his hands on, but around ten minutes later, he proudly presented Harry with a steaming mug the size of his head, filled with -

“Hot chocolate?” Harry asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Don’t look like that. This isn’t just any hot chocolate. This is world class hot chocolate. You won’t find hot chocolate better than this anywhere. This hot chocolate is made of dreams and cuddles from your mum - and Tescos finest grated chocolate. It’ll change your life.”

“Why, will I choke on it?” Harry asked, taking a sip.

Louis waited, biting his lip in anticipation. For a gratifying instant, Harry’s eyebrows flew up, and he looked down at the mug with new appreciation, eyes widening. Then, he reigned it all in, put the mug back down, and said, “It’s not too bad.”

“Sacrilege! My hot chocolate is the stuff of legends,” Louis said, swiping the mug and taking a gulp. It burned on the way down, not unlike vodka, only warmer. Vodka burn was an icy-hot kind of burn, like heartbreak and the pain of a punch to the chest. The hot chocolate warmed him as it scalded his throat; he suddenly no longer felt like he was wearing wet clothes, but like he was ten years old again, perched on the kitchen stool with his feet dangling several inches off the floor, listening as his mother told him how to make her special hot chocolate. (By the time he was eleven, Louis could make it better than she could. They both pretended that hers was the best, for nostalgia’s sake.)

“Careful,” said Harry, holding his hand out for the mug. “Keep going on like that and your head won’t fit through the door.”

“I will have doors specially made for me, and my world-class hot chocolate,” Louis said.

They sipped for a while in companionable silence, taking it in turns with the mug. Before long, Louis felt warm and frothy through and through, and some of the colour had returned to Harry’s cheeks, although the rest of him was still pasty pale, and his hands shook every time he lifted the mug.

“So,” Louis said, breaking the silence. “Do you have a lot of panic attacks?”

Harry’s head jerked up. “What?” he said, startled. “I don’t - that wasn’t - ”

“Come off it. I know what a panic attack looks like. Have you had them for a long time, or is it recent?”

For a moment, Harry stayed silent, lips pressed together. Then, he sighed. “I’ve never had them before, but just recently…I started having them a couple of weeks back. They’re getting worse, though. I’m having them more often…and they’re more…intense.” He swallowed. “I thought it wasn’t going to stop.”

“They’re awful,” Louis said. “I had them for a few years, not had any for a while now, touch wood.” He rapped the table with his knuckles. “Do you know what triggers them?”

“Dunno if it’s anything specific,” Harry mumbled, talking to the table. “I mean, I’m doing a lot of work… If I let myself think too much about it…”

“Have you ever thought about cutting down on the workload a bit? You do an awful lot, we never see you. You’re always locked up, studying.”

“I have to,” Harry said immediately. “It’s a lot of work, law, I can’t get behind on it.”

“You’re going to make yourself ill, Harry.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, seems like it,” Louis said pointedly.

Harry didn’t reply. After a moment, Louis pushed the mug across the table.

“You finish it. You look like you need it.”

“Thanks,” Harry said begrudgingly.

“I was fifteen,” Louis said.

“Hm?”

“When I had my first panic attack. Fifteen going on sixteen. I’d just landed the lead role in the school play, dead chuffed with myself, I was. I was determined to get it right, to be perfect, everyone said I was great for the role. I’d not long come out, I was on top of the world…but something didn’t click. I pored over that script day and night, and then as soon as I got on stage I’d muddle half the words or forget the tune of all the songs. I thought it was stage fright, at first. Except some nights, I was fine, I was magic, and other nights, I’d sit at the side of the stage, shaking.” Louis licked his lips. “Told myself I’d be all right on the night. Every panic attack ended with me saying ‘ah, it was just a one off, I’ll be fine on the night.’”

“And were you?” Harry asked.

“Nah,” Louis said. “Had a meltdown ten minutes before curtain up. Worst one I’ve ever had. They had to call an ambulance; I was projectile vomiting all over the place, stress does that to me sometimes. Some other guy got my role. He was pretty good, actually, I went to college with him.”

Harry looked appalled. “And that was it? You just stopped and let some other guy take over?”

“What was I supposed to do? I was in no fit state to go out there. Do you really think you could go onstage and start singing jazzy musical numbers halfway through a panic attack?”

“No,” Harry admitted. “But then how did you fix it? You said you don’t get them any more.”

Louis hesitated. “This is going to sound a bit like bollocks. And I’m not saying it’ll work for everyone, because it probably won’t. But I just kind of forced myself to do it? Like, I started off a lot smaller when I got to college - background roles, extras, you know. Then I worked up to minor speaking parts, then I had a go at being the understudy for some of the leads. And it was bloody difficult, I spent a whole lot of time sick to my stomach, or stuck on the bog with the runs; I remember at one point I was sick with anxiety for a whole week, non-stop. There wasn’t a minute where I didn’t have that heavy feeling in my stomach, I could barely eat. But, I dunno…it just clicked, in the end. I didn’t let myself give up. Because it’s tempting as fuck to crawl off and quit, but I couldn’t have an office job, panic attacks or no panic attacks. I’ve always wanted to act. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. He was looking off into the distance, once again looking at something Louis couldn’t see - but this time with a kind of fierce determination. “That’s like me, with Law. I want to help people.”

“Looks hard, though,” Louis said. “Loads of stuff to remember. And all that Latin.”

Harry swallowed.

“Your parents must be proud. Law, you know, it’s a good degree. Not like Drama. One of my posh aunts got all sniffy when I told her what I’m studying. _You want to work in the_ theatre, _Louis? How common_.”

“Yeah, well, my whole family are lawyers. It’s a family business. My mum, my step-dad. My sister.” He looked down at the dregs of cooling chocolate in the mug.

“Is that why you’re studying so hard, then?” Louis asked. “Roped into the family business?”

“No! I want to do it, Law’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Since I was five.” He allowed himself a smile. “Before that, I wanted to be a bus driver.”

“Bit more money in law,” Louis agreed. “…There must be a lot of pressure, then. To do well.”

“Yeah. My sister went to Cambridge. I’m kind of the family disappointment.”

“What?” Louis demanded. “Why? That’s a load of rubbish!”

“I used to be naturally clever,” Harry said. “Passed all my GCSEs, As and Bs across the board. Thought I was hot shit. Then I messed up my A-Levels. I thought I could keep pratting around like I had through high school. All the teachers lectured me, sent letters home, but I hid them all. Had a massive stash stuffed down the back of the wardrobe; I thought it’d be different in the actual exam, that it’d all just come together. And then my parents came with me on results day, and I came out with two D’s and an E.”

“Pfft!” said Louis, “is that it? I came out with two E’s and an F. Narrowly missed getting a U in one of them. Got a distinction in Drama; that was all I cared about. Never should have taken Geography. Hellish subject. Only did it because the teacher loathed me, I had an empty gap in my timetable and I saw a great opportunity to inflict my company on him for a couple more years.”

“You got into university with two E’s and an F?” Harry asked, not even bothering to hide his amazement.

“Nah,” said Louis. “Re-sat the entire two years, changed a few of my subjects. Quit my job to focus on school. I managed to get a C in Music and RE, then I came here. You never think about doing a re-sit?”

Harry pulled a face, as though Louis had said a disgusting swear word. “Gemma got all A’s. Went to Cambridge. Now she’s studying to become a defence attorney. Gemma’s never re-sat an exam in her life.”

“But you aren’t Gemma,” Louis said. “You’re you.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t want to let down my parents.”

“I’m sure your parents would have something to say if they knew you were having panic attacks on the stairs.”

“They only want me to do well,” Harry argued. “I can’t be trusted on my own; I messed around all through college. At first they wanted me to do an open university course, so that they could make sure I was doing all my work, but I managed to persuade them to give me another chance and let me come here instead. That’s why they sent Mike, to - ” He cut himself off, flushing.

“To keep an eye on you,” Louis realized. “Like the Fun Police?”

“To make sure I’m not slacking off. A few days of procrastination could fuck up my whole degree. I was lucky to get in here in the first place, I’m not going to throw it away.”

“Being hospitalized for stress would definitely fuck up your whole degree.”

“That’s ridiculous. It isn’t that bad. I just get a little bit worried sometimes - ”

“Because you’re locked up all day like fucking Rapunzel! It’s sick, Harry, you need more than this!” Louis lurched across the table and grabbed his hand. “It’s for your health. You’re going to go mad stuck in there all day.”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion,” Harry said defensively. “I don’t _always_ study. I go to work, and I decorate my room and stuff. I just can’t have any distractions.”

“Friends, you mean.”

Harry looked as though he might be about to get up and leave; he was already starting to pull his hand free, so Louis grabbed the other one and leaned across the table until their foreheads were almost touching. A giant worry line creased Harry’s forehead, with a dent in the middle as though someone was pressing hard on his head with their thumb. On an impulse, Louis swept his thumb across it, trying to smooth out the indentations. Harry’s forehead wrinkled with confusion beneath his touch.

“I know this is none of my business,” Louis said. “But I really like you, Harry. Let me help you.”

“No one can help me. I have to do this on my own.”

“I can’t help you with your work,” admitted Louis. “I think the kind of stuff you’re studying might be a bit beyond me. But I can help you with everything else. If you’ll let me…I could take you out. Just for an hour or two, every now and then. Just to help you unwind.”

“No,” Harry said firmly. “I can’t.”

“I’m not asking you to pack in your degree and join the circus, I’m asking you to go on a date with me!”

There was an awful silence, in which Louis put his hand to his mouth, letting Harry’s fall with a thump to the table. Guiltily, he lowered his fingers and tried to look as though he had meant to say that, like it hadn’t just slipped out, tripped and fallen from his mouth with an ungainly thump, like someone falling down the stairs. Swallowing, he leaned back in his chair, trying to look nonchalant and feeling like an imbecile.

“Are you asking me out?” Harry asked.

“Well.” Louis cleared his throat. He couldn’t look at Harry without his cheeks burning. “Yeah.”

“Louis…”

“You think it’s a horrible idea and you’d far rather go back to being arch nemeses?” Louis asked, although it made his throat hurt to speak and he wasn’t sure that he would be able to look Harry in the eye ever again.

“No,” Harry said. “I want to. I really want to. I barely know you, nearly all of our conversations end with insults. You’re rude and tactless, about as subtle as a brick, you drink too much and you’re the most melodramatic, unpredictable person I’ve ever met - but God, I like you.”

A grin spread across Louis’ face. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“But - ”

Louis’ face fell. “Does there have to be a but?”

Harry ignored him. “I can’t afford to be distracted right now. You’re wonderful - honestly wonderful. And I’m sure you’d be a great boyfriend. But I can’t keep up with you. I can’t even cope with being casually acquainted with you, let alone going out with you. You say hi to me in the corridor, and I can’t think straight for an hour. You hang around outside my room and run into me on purpose, and I’m giddy for three days. You burst into my head and turn everything upside down, and I don’t have time to set it all straight again.”

“So don’t,” Louis said softly.

Harry’s face was drawing closer, his features blurring, so that his eyes became a pane of stained green glass, glistening right before his eyes. It was making his head ache, the intensity of it, so he shut his eyes and waited. There were doors banging below, chatter in the corridor, the whiz and thump of the washing machine as someone’s laundry whirled around inside it. But still, if Louis strained his ears enough, he could hear Harry’s breathing growing heavier; he even thought he heard the rasp of his tongue passing across his lower lip to moisten it, and it made his head spin faster than the washing machine. His heart had paused expectantly, hovering in his chest, waiting, waiting, and Louis held his breath.

Harry’s lips danced across his so briefly that it was like a butterfly had alighted momentarily on his mouth. Eyes flying open, Louis jerked back to look at him. Harry’s eyes were wide, his mouth hanging slightly open, and when Louis stared at him, he reddened like an apple, but he did not get up and rush away. Instead, he held Louis’ gaze.

Louis’ heart had begun to do a waltz.

“If they think I’m not working hard enough, my parents will pull me out,” Harry said quietly. “They’re paying for everything for me. I don’t want to waste any more of their money. And if I spoil this, it’s my last chance. They won’t bail me out again. I can’t disappoint them, I can’t lose everything I’ve ever wanted, just because I fancy you.”

“I’m not asking you to run off and elope with me,” Louis said, reaching across the table again and interlocking their fingers together, anchoring Harry to him before he could run off again like a frightened deer. If he was going to do a runner now, he was going to be taking Louis - and possibly the kitchen table - with him. “I’m asking you to come and see a movie with me next Monday. _Inside Out_. And then I’m asking you to come to maccies with me and watch me eat a burger the size of my head, buy you fries and steal them all.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “McDonalds is so bad for you. It’d probably be healthier to eat the cardboard box it comes in.”

“Harry,” said Louis. “I don’t give a shit. Are you going to come?”

Chewing on his lip, Harry screwed his face up and sat fidgeting, racked with indecision. Louis reached out to pull his lip out from between his teeth, and Harry twitched slightly beneath his touch, eyelids dipping closed for a split second.

The look on Harry’s face was the look of a small  child being offered something shiny that was dangling mere inches out of reach. Louis felt like some kind of torturer.  
  
“It’s too risky,” Harry decided, making Louis want to roll his eyes yet again. “Mike works here; he’s a lecturer for the university. He could walk around the corner and catch us at any time. I can’t even nip out for a coffee without him popping up; he’s like a bloodhound.”

“So we’ll keep it a secret, then!” said Louis, with increasing desperation. “We won’t go on dates around here. I’ll make sure no one sees us together.”

“You?” Harry spluttered. “You couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended on it! I don’t think your mouth knows how to shut itself.”

Affronted, Louis sat up straight. “I can keep a secret. I’ll prove it. Go on a date with me; no one will know.”

“This can’t be the kind of ‘no one’ where you bend the rules,” Harry warned. “When I say 'no one’, I mean 'no one.’ Not friends, not parents, not even cute dogs you see on the street. You can’t tell _anyone_.”

Louis’ face fell slightly. “Fine,” he repeated, a little less certainly than before. Then, “Even Niall?”

“Especially not Niall. I swear he breaks the sound barrier every time he opens his mouth; it’s like he’s swallowed a megaphone. Nobody can know, Louis. That’s the deal.”  
  
It was not, he supposed, a particularly bad deal. After all, Louis had kept these sorts of things secret before. When he was fourteen or fifteen and smuggling his mother’s wine out of the house to go and meet with older boys on the hill, and to do god knows what to each other, he had never told a soul. Even now, he kept those stories very close to his chest, and it would have taken a crowbar to pry them loose. So what was it about this that made him pause?

He supposed it was that he had grown used to getting things out in the open. Of course, he had to come out over and over; it was never just one huge gay fanfare. Every time he met someone new, his sexuality would come up at some point; he had gotten used to getting it out of the way early on, so that he wouldn’t get into any sticky situations later. He was almost painfully frank about it; no one made more cock and balls jokes than Louis, no one flaunted his campness so flamboyantly; no one pointed out as many hot blokes on campus as he did. It seemed like the easiest way to make it clear to everyone that he was about as straight as a hairpin bend. But it would have been far nicer, Louis thought, to have a boyfriend to drop into conversations, to introduce to people, to hold hands with, to _show_ people that he was gay rather than having to tell them all the time. And the idea of hushing it up behind closed doors made Louis feel a little uncomfortable. After all, it was 2015.  
  
But it wasn’t as though they were keeping it secret because they were both boys, he reasoned. It was because Harry’s parents seemed determined to exchange their son for a robot. A robot they could dress in a silly white wig and dump in a courtroom, without distractions like fun to get in his way.  And if anyone deserved fun, it was Harry. Louis reckoned he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Harry smile since they met.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” he said.

“Shake on it,” Harry said, holding his hand out.  
  
That hand would have swamped Louis’; it seemed almost comically large.  
  
“I’m not shaking on a date,” said Louis. “Here - I’ll pinkie promise.” He held his pinkie out.

Harry’s lips twitched; he shook his head, but wrapped his little finger around Louis’ in agreement.

“Right,” Louis said. “I’ll see you on Monday, then, lover.”  
  
He swooped down and gave Harry one lightning fast kiss on the cheek, an electric brush of lips on skin that made him tingle, and then he was gone, slipping from the room and trying to keep the enormous grin off his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on tumblr
> 
> Also a little disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist, and I'm by no means an expert on panic attacks or anxiety. I'm just going off my own experience of these things, what has worked for me, how I've dealt with it and so on. Everyone experiences these things differently and these coping mechanisms are not a universal thing, of course. Neither Louis or I claim to be a world authority in dealing with anxiety, so. Just putting that out there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert for Inside Out!!! It's the movie they see on their date. To avoid, stop reading at "He was quite happy where he was", and continue at "Oops."

Louis sat on a wall a few feet away from the bus stop, swinging his legs, trying not to check the time on his phone every five minutes. The bus was late; he was sure of it. Frustration had him wriggling atop the wall, feeling the friction rub through his jeans.   
  
Harry's excessive paranoia had made planning their date exceedingly difficult; at first, they had communicated by slipping notes underneath each other's doors, which Louis thought was cute to begin with, but he soon tired of the impracticality of it. He'd started to take the piss, hiding notes inside the boots Harry left by the doors of the building, putting them down the back of his shirt as they passed in the corridor, resolutely not looking at each other, and even, on one occasion, swapping the spoon Harry was using to stir his tea with another spoon, which had a note wrapped around the handle and secured with an elastic band.  
  
After that, Harry relented and gave Louis his phone number. Louis considered this to be a great triumph, and texted him rows and rows of emojis late into the night, until Harry got thoroughly pissed off with him.  
  
However, in the end, they had decided upon a plan. Harry was going to get on the bus with his work uniform on, as though going to Lush. At the very next bus stop, where Louis was waiting, he'd get off, and they'd walk together to the cinema. In spite of the theatrics, Louis found himself enjoying the subterfuge - it was like a game.   
  
The bus drew up; Louis leapt off the wall and immediately cursed himself for being so eager. It was embarrassing.  
  
When Harry stepped off the bus, Louis had to try very hard not to laugh. Harry was wearing his Lush apron, which peeped out from beneath his usual black trench coat that he'd left unbuttoned. It flapped around him like a cloak, so that he looked like a supervillain in a low-budget kids' movie. He'd pulled his hair back in a tight bun, and was wearing a pair of sunglasses which obscured ninety percent of his face, only his nose and mouth showing from behind them.

"Oh my God," said Louis.

"What?" Harry asked anxiously, lowering the sunglasses to peer over them. "Is it too much?"

"You look like you just stepped out of a cheap spy movie," Louis said. "Where did you get those glasses?"

"I didn't want anyone to recognize me," Harry said.

"You stick out like a sore thumb," Louis told him. "Take those ridiculous sunglasses off, at least."

Pouting, Harry took the glasses off. "I thought it was a good disguise."

"Yeah, if you want us to get followed by the police. You look like you've joined a cult." He looked Harry up and down, taking in the sheer white shirt, two tattoos on his chest peeping through, too indistinct to make out properly. Then he looked at Harry's hair, smoothed back into a bun. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that the sides had been woven into a complex pair of braids. "Your hair looks nice though."

"Oh." Harry turned a little pink, but he smiled. "Thank you."

"Come on, we're going to miss the movie," Louis said, and they started walking towards the cinema.

He had expected to lag behind, Harry's long, sloping strides carrying him faster than Louis could walk - but years of having friends who were unfairly tall had caused Louis to unconsciously speed up. He took three steps for every one of Harry's, but they kept pace nicely together. Every now and then, Louis would glance up at Harry, who alternated between glancing over his shoulder every five seconds, and humming tunelessly under his breath. His hands didn't seem to know what to do with themselves; his fingers wove around each other, tying themselves in knots.

"Harry?" Louis said.

Harry flinched, then looked startled by his own reaction. He smiled sheepishly. "Yeah?"

"Can I hold your hand?"

He was sure that Harry would just shake his head and move his hands safely out of harm’s way, but Harry surprised him by chewing on his lip, evidently considering the request.

"Fuck it," he said, and thrust his hand into Louis'.

They walked in silence again for a while. Louis decided that it was more like Harry was holding his hand rather than the other way around; his fingers were lost inside Harry's gentle paw. Looking down at their fingers, Louis noticed that Harry had painted his nails black and stuck little diamantes on them in the shape of a flower.

"Wow!" he said, drawing Harry's hand closer to his face to get a better look. "Did you do that?"

"Oh. Yeah. I know it's kind of silly, but -"

"Don't be daft, it looks great. It must have taken ages."

Harry looked pleased. "Not really, the diamantes can be a bit fiddly but it's easy to do if you've got the right tools."

"My sisters would love this. Will you teach me? I'm kind of clumsy but I can give it a go."

"Sure! I can do yours, too, if you like."

Louis hesitated. Harry's face fell immediately; Louis watched his shoulders curl inwards as he dropped his gaze to the floor.

"Never mind, I know you probably don't do that sort of thing - I'm sorry."

"No, no," Louis assured him. "It's not like that, it's just that I can't keep a manicure to save my life. My sister's doing a beauty course at college and she used to practice on me, but I did her head in because I'd have chipped half of it off before it even dried properly. I haven't got the patience to wait for them to dry. I don't want to waste all your little diamond things."

"Oh, it's easy, all you have to do is stick your fingers in a bit of cold water and they dry in about thirty seconds flat," Harry said, perking up immediately. “I’ll show you later on, if you like.”

“I’d like that,” Louis said.

After that, the atmosphere as they walked was a little easier, although they had lapsed into silence once again. This time, Louis didn't mind so much; the quiet felt more like a lull in the conversation rather than an elastic band, which might at any moment snap back and sting his fingers. He would have liked to talk - it was a date; they were supposed to be talking - but the trouble was that he had no idea where to begin. Most of their conversations had begun with arguments; during the rest, Louis had been drunk. It might have been easier if Harry had been latching on to any of his attempts to start a conversation, but Harry merely drifted along at his side with a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth, apparently lost in happy thoughts. He got little enough time to relax; Louis left him to it.

The next hurdle came when they entered the cinema. Louis pulled out his debit card and smiled at the bored-looking girl behind the counter, who moved her mouth slightly in response.

"Two students for _Inside Out_?" he said. “And a large box of popcorn.”

The girl tapped a few buttons on her till. "Do you have your student ID?"

"Sure," Louis said, pulling the card out of his wallet. He glanced across at Harry, who had frozen. "Harry?"

Mouth working, Harry managed to stutter, "No, sorry, I've - I've left mine at home, I'll pay the extra, don't worry -"

Louis' eyes narrowed. Harry's fist was clenched around a black lanyard around his neck that Louis was ninety percent certain was his student card.

"Don't be silly, it doesn't matter. I'll pay, it's only a couple more quid," Louis said, glancing at the girl to see if she had noticed anything amiss. Her eyes still bore the glassy look characteristic of bored, underpaid retail workers; she had almost certainly noticed, but he doubted that she cared. She probably saw far weirder things than that on a daily basis.

Taking their tickets and shoving the popcorn bucket underneath his arm, Louis steered Harry towards the correct screen. Breathing out, Harry released the lanyard, and it bounced against his chest, flashing what was clearly some form of ID.

"What was that all about? Is your ID photo really that bad? You should see mine; I’ve got this horrific moustache - ”

“I couldn’t give her my ID, then she’d have found my name out! What if Mike comes asking if I’ve been here?”

“I think that’s a bit of a long-shot, babe,” Louis said gently. “How likely is it that Mike’s going to go round scouring all the local cinemas on a Monday afternoon, just on the off-chance that you took the afternoon off to see a movie?”

Harry hesitated, worrying at his lip with his teeth. Reaching up, Louis tugged Harry’s lip with his thumb, unhooking it and watching colour rush back into the skin. For a moment, he didn’t let go, just rubbed his thumb across Harry’s plump lower lip. It was strangely silky, not chapped, like Louis’ own, and shining slightly from where his teeth had dug in. Louis wanted to kiss the fading tooth marks, but with Harry already looking like he might be on the verge of an anxiety attack, he decided it might not be the best idea.

“I doubt that girl would remember your name even if she’d seen it, babe; she sees a thousand different ID cards a day. She’s far more likely to remember someone named Horace Bottomly, or Dick Ryder, than some cute guy named Harry Styles who worries too much.”

For a moment, Harry looked as though he were going to argue, but then he swallowed and attempted a smile.

“Come on,” Louis said. “Let’s just watch the movie, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry said, and when he tried another smile, it looked genuine.

Louis was not ashamed to admit that he enjoyed the movie. He hadn’t only picked it because it seemed like an ambiguous choice - there seemed little that could make Harry anxious in a movie about little people living inside a girl’s head, controlling her emotions - but also because it looked like a good movie. He only wished his sisters had been there to see it.

The cinema chairs were lumpy, and Louis got the sticky seat, chivalrously sitting on a wodge of toffee that had been ground into the upholstery so that Harry wouldn’t get anything on his jeans. Every time he moved, he could feel the sweet melting a little more into the back of his jeans, but he decided it was worth it about ten minutes into the movie, when Harry reached across the arm-rest to hold his hand.

He ended up with his head resting on Harry’s shoulder, hair tickling his cheek. For someone so bony, Harry made a good pillow; Louis’ head fit perfectly into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, and Harry’s smooth cheek pressed against Louis’ hair felt like a caress every time he moved. Closing his eyes, he toyed with Harry’s fingers and occasionally fed him bits of popcorn from the bucket resting in Harry’s lap; every time his tongue swiped across Louis’ skin, catching the buttery crumbs, it made his stomach flip. It was strange, he thought, how comfortable he was with Harry already, that he could cuddle up to him like this in a dark movie theatre and not have an ulterior motive, not be planning to whisk Harry away and shag him in the toilets as soon as it was over - although with the way Harry kept sucking on his fingertips, Louis was amazed he _wasn’t_ thinking about that. The arm-rest dug into his hip, and every time he shifted in his chair, he could feel the toffee wodge sucking at the fabric of his jeans, peeling away with a sticky squelch if he fidgeted enough.

Even so, he felt no desire to wriggle away, or to try and detach himself from the goop. He was quite happy where he was.

The pivotal point, though, came at Bing-Bong’s “death”, when he finally faded from Riley’s memory and Louis found himself welling up, his eyes stinging.

“Take her to the moon for me.”

One of his tears threatened to spill over; Louis held his eyes furiously open even as they swam, knowing that if he blinked, then he would start bawling. In order to distract himself, he glanced across at Harry, who had his lips tightly clamped together. Astonishingly, his eyes were glistening.

“Are you fucking crying?” Louis hissed.

“No,” Harry muttered.

“You fucking are, you great wuss. Look.” He almost poked Harry in the eye in his haste to prove it, thumbing at the corner of his eyes. Soon enough, his search paid off; dewdrop of moisture glistened on the pad of his thumb, a twinkling diamond that Louis held in front of Harry with a smug look. “Fucking wuss. Fucking crying.”

“You just poked me in the eye!”

Louis made a puppy face, sticking his lower lip out. “Awww, did Bing-Bong die? Are you sad, now that he’s dead?”

“Like you’re not crying too, you hypocrite,” Harry hissed.

Affronted, Louis turned his face away and hastily scrubbed at his wet eyes. “Am not.”

“Shhh!” someone hissed from behind them.

Oops. Louis had forgotten for a moment that they were in a cheap, sticky movie theatre, not cuddled up on a couch together watching the movie in privacy. A kids’ movie, nonetheless. Still, his pride would not allow him to be shushed; twisting in his side, he threw up his middle finger, hoping that it was too dark for any kids to see, and then turned back to face the screen and crunched obnoxiously on what was left of the popcorn.

“Shh,” Harry whispered, right in his ear.

It made Louis shiver, the words dancing down his spine like sparks and settling somewhere low in his belly.

“Make me,” he whispered.

Harry caught his chin and pulled Louis’ face towards him, kissing him before Louis could even register what was happening. He tasted like popcorn and Louis almost overturned the popcorn bucket in his haste, grabbing the front of Harry’s stupid trench coat and dragging him in. He flailed wildly, almost clambering into Harry’s lap, then remembering the kids and the toffee and holding himself back through extreme force of will; as much as he might like the two of them to be stuck together, he didn’t fancy paying the dry-cleaning bill to have goop scraped off Harry’s expensive jeans, or being kicked out of the cinema for aggressively snogging during a kids’ movie. Instead, he just grabbed two handfuls of silky hair and pulled Harry down to his level, their mouths whispering together without words. Harry made a low noise in the back of his throat and his tongue slipped into Louis’ mouth; astonishment made Louis almost topple backwards, but all of a sudden Harry’s huge hand was on his back, pressing tenderly against his spine, and he felt hot all over.

Someone cleared their throat from the row behind. Louis and Harry ignored them.

By the time they resurfaced with a soft pop, they’d missed half the movie and the parents behind them had moved on from throat-clearing to loud tutting. It took Louis a supreme effort to keep from giggling; he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, wiping it and also hiding his embarrassing grin. Apparently, Harry had no such compunction; he was beaming like someone in a toothpaste advert, his eyes dancing. His mouth seemed almost too big for his face, smile stretching so wide that Louis would have been worried that it might burst his cheeks, but it looked right, on Harry. Just the right amount of goofiness, yet still beautiful. It was the first time Louis had seen him smile like that; he wanted to make it happen again, and keep making it happen, to bask in Harry’s exultation.

Harry's smile lingered as they left the cinema, hand in hand. They were closely followed by a pair of huffy middle-aged women, iron grips clamped around the hands of a couple of sticky toddlers. Louis suspected that these had been the shushers, and immediately felt the one iota of guilt he'd had evaporate. He couldn't have ruined the film for these kids; they probably couldn't even understand it. Regardless, they'd almost certainly ruined more than their fair share of movies with incessant baby babble; even Louis, who liked kids, had no patience for babies that screamed in movie theatres. It was karma, he reasoned.

Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it on. Smirking, Louis said, "You actually turned your phone off? Who does that?"

"Me," said Harry. "It interferes with the equipment."

"Nobody believes that."

"Well I don't care; it's good manners," Harry said, and then jumped as the home screen of his phone came into view. "Shit!"

Louis was so surprised to hear him swear that for a moment he didn't even wonder why he had done it. It was like hearing the Queen swear.

“It’s nearly half four!”

“Yeah, well, I know it’s a bit late for lunch, but - ”

All of a sudden, Harry’s phone lit up, buzzing like a wasp, and his eyes widened. He held it at arm’s length as a picture of a beaming woman appeared on the screen, with ‘Mum’ written underneath it. Appalled, Harry looked at Louis and then back at the phone.

They watched it ring out, the screen going dark, and then immediately it began to ring again. Moaning, Harry danced from foot to foot, chewing so hard on his lip that Louis half expected it to bleed.

“What do I do, what do I do?”

“Answer it!”

“I can’t! She’ll hear the cars; she’ll know I’m out!”

“Make something up,” Louis said sharply. “Constitutional walk, nipped out for something to eat, educational DVD with traffic background noises, I don’t know! It’s not a crime to be outside for half an hour or so; you’ll get vitamin D deficiency otherwise.”

“Shit,” Harry said again, and swiped his thumb across the screen. “Hi? Hello?”

Louis thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and even he couldn’t help but feel edgy. As he watched Harry pick at a hangnail on his thumb, he felt the strangest urge to start fidgeting like a naughty schoolboy. Folding his arms, he strained his ears to listen, but the steady rush of traffic whooshing past kept him from hearing so much as the background buzzing Harry’s mother’s voice. He expected that she would sound like some snotty matronly type, but from the glimpse he’d caught of her caller ID photo, she didn’t seem at all the cruel harpy he’d imagined.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. My phone was switched off. I was doing...uh...a practice test. You know, like a mock exam? I turned my phone off so that I wouldn’t get distracted.” Now, he was chewing feverishly on his lip again, picking at a loose bit of skin with his teeth. “Yeah, not too bad, I’m going to try and get it marked later.” He twitched slightly. “What? Uh, the window’s open. Listen, can I call you back later? I really want to get this test marked. Okay? Okay. Love you bye.”

He said all of this in a rush, as if to ensure that she couldn’t interrupt, then hung up.

There was a moment of deadly calm as Harry stowed his phone back in the pocket of his trench coat. Then, he folded over with a low groan, burying his head in his hands. Grabbing two handfuls of his hair, he tugged on it, curls sifting through his fingers, and then he spun around, still gripping the hair as if he were seconds away from ripping it all out.

"I need to go home."

"What?" Louis said, startled. "Home? Why? It's the middle of term, they can't just - you - what?"

"What?" Harry said distractedly. "No, not home, not Holmes Chapel home, back to the flat, I need to - they're probably sending Mike back to check on me right this minute, if I'm not in when he gets there - I have to go."

Louis took a very deep breath. Then another one. He suddenly felt very tempted to start pulling on his hair, too. Standing very still, he tried to think of calm things, while his anger trembled like an avalanche in the making, ready to brim over.

Harry did not appear to notice Louis' attempts to keep his temper under control; he was too busy trying not to hyperventilate. With great effort, Louis pulled himself together and plastered on a smile. Actually, it was rather more of a grimace than anything else - his lips were pressed firmly together, twisted upwards at the corners - but he managed it. Once he was sure that he could speak without yelling (not at Harry, never at Harry; just the ridiculousness of this situation, that they could not enjoy more than an hour or so of each other’s company without someone ringing up to make sure Harry was still incarcerated in his room with a mountain of study notes) he said, "At least let me call a taxi."

"What?" Harry said.

"It's quicker than the bus. That way you won't get caught. I'll pay."

"Oh." Harry blinked. "Thank you."

"Don't worry about it," Louis said, pulling out his phone.

The taxi arrived within minutes, but all the time they were waiting, Harry paced up and down like a caged animal, not speaking. Every time Louis tried to call his attention, he flinched, and all of his responses were distracted. After a while, Louis gave up and left him to it. Every few minutes, Harry would get his phone out to check the time; a couple of times, he put it back in his pocket and then dug it straight back out again for another look, as though worried that he had got it wrong. And all the while, he fidgeted; biting his nails, all the polish chipping off, little black bits sticking to his lips; bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet; tapping on things with his nails. Louis just sat on the wall with a ten pound note clenched in his fist, trying not to sulk and failing miserably. He thought bitterly of Harry's mother, imagining her as a Cruella De Vil type figure, lounging in a winged armchair, smoking a cigarillo and wearing elbow-length silk gloves while she made phone calls on an old-fashioned spin-dial telephone, terrorizing people. (None of this fitted in very well with the glimpse he’d caught of the smiling woman on Harry's phone, but Louis' imagination managed to work around that.)

The taxi drew up, and Harry lunged over to it. Louis passed him the tenner and opened the car door; Harry had one long leg in the car and the rest of him hanging out, when he turned around and said anxiously, "I'm sorry you can't come with me."

"Huh?" said Louis, still holding the door like he was Harry's personal chauffeur.

"In the taxi. In case someone sees us both getting out of it."

"Right," Louis said through gritted teeth. "Of course."

Harry slid into the taxi and Louis slammed the door behind him, perhaps a little harder than was necessary. He resisted the urge to kick the bumper.

The window rolled down and Harry poked his head out. "I am sorry for today. I had a really good time."

"Yeah. Me too."

"What will you do now?"

"Oh," said Louis, "I'm meeting a couple of friends in the town centre; we're going to have a bit of a wander round. Don't you worry about me. Now get your head back in there; the taxi's running the meter already. You're going to waste all my money."

"Sorry," Harry said, ducking back in, and the taxi did an abrupt three-point turn and vanished around the corner, leaving a rather disgruntled Louis to stand alone outside the cinema with his hands in his pockets.

Louis did not go to meet friends. Instead, he decided to take a walk - a very long one, taking a massive detour right round town. He tramped off with his head down.

A few minutes later, the heavens opened, the resulting downpour leaving him with sopping wet shoulders, rain running down his back and droplets running down his nose, dripping onto his neck. For a while, Louis continued, stomping through the puddles and swearing as water seeped into his shoes, but eventually he was forced to duck underneath a bus shelter and sit down on the weird plastic bench. His feet wouldn't quite reach the floor; for once, he didn't mind. It kept them from getting even more wet. Folding his arms, he began to think.

It hadn't been the most successful date in the world - although the worst part, he thought, was that it kind of _had._ Being with Harry was easier than Louis had ever expected it to be. They'd skipped all of the stilted first-date conversation, the sweaty hand-holding, the cramped arm-around-shoulder cinema hugs, and gone straight into cuddling like they'd been doing it forever. He'd been able to feel the tension leaking out of Harry's shoulders - and god, if that wasn't an ego boost, knowing that his very presence was like some kind of deep-tissue massage - and something in Louis had felt oddly familiar. Like this wasn't their first date, but their five hundredth. Like they'd been doing this forever.

On the other hand, they hadn't even managed one date without something going wrong. Louis shuddered to imagine having the kind of mother who could ruin things from over an hour's drive away, but somehow Harry's mother had managed it. Perhaps it had just been bad timing on her part - but from the look on Harry's face when he realized the time, Louis suspected not. The whole thing gave him the creeps, imagining a woman having set times to check in on her adult son and make sure he was doing as he was told.

He needed advice - even shitty, drunken, nonsensical advice would have sufficed. In fact, Louis thought, the advice itself made no difference at all. What he really needed was for someone to listen. Someone he could rant to, who would cheer and groan in all the right places. Just someone to confide in.

 _God,_ he thought. _We've been on one date and I've already almost cracked._ Maybe he wasn't cut out for this secrecy lark. As Harry said, keeping his mouth shut was not one of Louis' many talents.

"Right," he said.

He knew he must have looked a little strange, sat sopping wet at a bus stop, talking to himself, but this was a strange situation. Digging around in his pocket, Louis found his wallet, which had a debit card, some chewing gum and four used bus tickets in it. Frowning, he dug deeper, producing several bits of pocket lint, a button, and finally, a dirty pound coin.

"Heads," Louis said, "I stick with him and see how it goes. Tails, I tell him I had a very nice time but I just don't think it's going to work out. Go!"

He flipped the coin. It arched perfectly, landing in his palm, and he slapped it onto the back of his hand. For a moment, he waited. Then he lifted his hand away and looked down.

Tails.

He was filled with dismay. He rubbed the dirty coin on his jeans, wondering if the accumulated filth might have blurred the image beyond recognition, but no. Definitely tails.

"Best of three?" Louis said.

He tossed the coin twice more. Both times, it landed on tails.

By this point, Louis was beginning to get seriously pissed off. The stupid coin didn't even want to give Harry a chance! He weighed it in his hand, trying to decide whether it was loaded. Could you load coins? He didn't know. He even checked both faces to make sure that it wasn't a dud, used to cheat with (with Niall around, anything was possible; he looked like a chilled out guy, but he was devious, and insanely competitive; he’d do anything to win.) but it was just a normal, albeit rather grubby pound coin. Sighing, Louis shoved it back into his pocket.

But then, he thought, hadn’t that made the decision for him? He’d used the coin because he hadn’t thought himself capable of making the choice, of deciding between a quiet life, trying to put Harry out of his mind and choose to crush on someone without bitten lips and frayed nails, someone who wasn’t constantly looking over their shoulder or hunched over a textbook...or continuing with this mess. Failed half-dates, rubbing his back to reassure him, grinding his teeth over his interfering family, kissing him and laughing in the dark, curling up against him like he belonged in the hollow of Harry’s neck… He’d already made his decision, that was the most ridiculous thing. He already knew he’d chosen Harry; he just wasn’t sure he should have.

The rain was beginning to peter into nothing. Louis poked his head out from underneath the bus stop, then held out a hand to feel for rain drops. Nothing. In fact, rays of sunlight were already shooting out from behind the clouds, spears of golden warmth that were too startling to be quite pleasant. Squinting, Louis turned to peer at the clouds. They were still the colour of dirty cotton wool, but some blue skies were peeking through the gaps.

Shaking his sopping hair like a wet dog, he flipped it off his face and began squelching towards the town centre. The pound coin might pay for a bus ride back to the flat, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to let me know what you thought!! :)


	7. Chapter 7

He stripped down to his boxers in the kitchen, hurling the ball of wet clothes into the dryer, followed by his shoes, before realizing that he didn’t know how to work it. For five embarrassing minutes, he scratched his head over the knobs and buttons and all the mystifying symbols wriggling across the front, not quite daring to touch anything. Just as he was about to admit defeat and either text someone who knew how to use the dryer (Harry) or start knocking on random doors in his underwear asking for assistance, he managed to figure the whole thing out and set the dryer off all by himself. Hands on his hips, Louis proudly watched his clothes whirl around in the machine, congratulating himself on his spectacular adulting skills, and silently hoping that they wouldn’t shrink to the size of Barbie clothes or turn purple or something. He had little faith in his ability to be a functional, non-alcoholic adult.

Then, he accidentally stepped on a small pile of cornflakes that someone had spilt on the floor, and, yelling, he grabbed his foot and tried to sweep off the little bits clinging to the sole of his foot. The pain was something akin to stepping on a piece of Lego; the fragments were surprisingly sharp, like gritty little daggers. Swearing, Louis hopped around in a circle and came face to face with Jade, holding an armful of washing with her lips parted in a round, Cheerio-shaped ‘O’.

Louis yelled all over again, tried to cover his crotch with his hands (his boxers were still damp; now he was thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t taken those off, too; see-through, grey, too-baggy boxers were better than no boxers at all) realized his hands weren’t big enough, and whipped a soggy pizza box off the table, holding it in front of himself like a shield. Pizza crusts fell onto his feet.

“Er,” said Jade.

“I can explain,” said Louis.

She waited, eyebrow raised.

“Okay, I can’t explain,” he admitted.

“Did you set off the washing machine?”

“Tumble dryer,” Louis corrected.

“Washing machine,” said Jade, pointing.

Louis spun around with horror. Sure enough, his clothes - and his only surviving pair of shoes, the shoes without any holes, or vomit on them, his comfiest pair - were churning around in the machine in a surge of soapy water.

“What?” he yelped. “No!” Falling to his knees before the machine, he grabbed his head and stared, agonized, at his clothes being thrown around inside. He grabbed the door and started rattling it, but it stayed resolutely in place.

“Are you trying to flood the place?” Jade asked, dumping her laundry on the table.

Louis groaned, turned his back on the machine and slid to the floor, head tipped back. Beneath him, the machine rattled and thumped, making his head bump. It was like resting his head against the window of a bus waiting at the stop, vibrating hard enough to give him a headache.

“I’ve failed. I’m not an adult. I am a four year old doing a drama degree.”

“Well at least your clothes will fit the new, four-year old you, with the temperature you’ve got them on,” said Jade, inspecting the dials behind his head. “They’ll be the size of a baby-gro once you get them out.”

“Shit,” said Louis, banging his head against the door.

“Babe,” said Jade, “it’s okay. Look - here, put this on.” She plucked an olive green Parka from her washing pile, wrapping it around his shoulders. The hood fell over his face, casting a fluffy shadow over him. “What were you doing trying to tumble dry a single outfit in your pants, anyway?”

“I got caught in the rain and I was trying to salvage my outfit so I could wear it again. I don’t know how to work the washing machine. I couldn’t even tell which one _was_ the washing machine.”

“Clearly,” said Jade. “Look, it’s not the end of the world. When your clothes come out, if they’d a bit tight, you can just bunch up a load of other clothes and stick them inside. If you leave them for a few hours, it stretches them out. And next time, just ask me. I can teach you how to use the washing machine.” Sliding down the unit, she sat beside him, arms wrapped around her legs, she said, “What were you doing out in that downpour anyway?”

“Thinking,” Louis said gloomily.

Jade tutted. “You don’t want to be doing too much of that. You might sprain something.” She gave him a sidewards glance. “Is there something wrong? You look proper morbid sitting down there all bundled up in my coat.”

“It’s just that this uni lark is a bit more difficult than I’d hoped. I was kind of thinking there’d be more beer pong and less electricity bills. And I already used up most of my student loan allowance for this week. My room smells of sick and weed and I just threw my last pair of decent shoes into the washer to get drowned and shrunk down to a size two. I miss my mum.”

This last part came out in a huff, and he leaned forwards to rest his chin on his knees, a little disgruntled at having admitted it. As fond as he was of his mum, and as little as he gave a shit about being called a mummy’s boy, it didn’t feel particularly adult to admit that he was homesick. Besides which, he didn’t just miss her because he missed having clean socks and home cooked meals. His whole life, she’d been his best mate. These days, he barely seemed to find time to drop her a text.

“I miss mine too,” Jade said wistfully. “Sunday roasts…having her wait up for me after a night out and make me drink a jug of water and have a piece of toast before I went to bed…I never had a hangover before I came here, but now I’ve got no one to make sure I stay hydrated…”

They both sighed. Louis felt himself lilting over to the side, and his head ended up on Jade’s shoulder. For a while, they sat like that, the chill of the tiles seeping through Louis’ underpants and the fluffy hood of the parka tickling his cheek. Jade smelt like fruity perfume and talcum powder and Louis breathed her in and thought of home.

Eventually, the whirring and thumping from behind them began to slow, and Louis lifted his head a little listlessly. With Jade’s elbow pressed against his ribs and a slight headache buzzing at his temples from the shuddering of the machine, Louis turned to watch the clothes in the machine slowly stop whirling around and slop to a halt in the bottom.

“There we go,” said Jade, popping the door open. She fished out one bedraggled shoe, which dripped forlornly onto the floor, creating a puddle there. Louis looked sadly at the shoe, which resembled little more than a lump of soggy black material, although the soles were whiter than he ever remembered seeing them. “Now I’m going to show you how to use the tumble dryer.”

~*~

Several days after the disastrous date, Louis was heading back to the flat after his drama practical, feeling rather pleased with himself. As badly as he was doing in his lectures, preferring to spend them doodling or scrolling through facebook or watching funny cat videos on his phone (usually with the sound turned off) in the practicals, he was excelling. That lesson, the professor had actually called him up to the front to show off his interpretation of her instructions, and several people in his class had clapped him on the back on the way out. Harry had actually texted him back several times that day, and Louis, Liam and Jade were going to the pub that evening to ‘study’. This was, of course, code for ‘not study at all, and probably get a bit pissed.’ Everything, Louis thought, was going his way.

“Louis! Hey, Louis!”

Turning around, he beamed, half expecting another congratulatory greeting from one of his fellow students. Instead, he saw Sarah, hurrying across the yard with her arms wrapped around herself, cheeks pink with cold. Louis hesitated for a moment, half wanting to pretend he hadn’t heard her and hurry off, but she was almost upon him and he was painfully aware of two things; firstly that the last time he had been face to face with her, he had unwittingly embarrassed her and tricked her into going on a date with a mate who hadn’t been interested, and secondly that she was carrying an extremely heavy-looking book bag.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi, Sarah! How’s it hanging?”

As soon as the words had left his mouth, he closed his eyes and fought the urge to roll his eyes at himself. In trying to be casual, he’d come off as a douchebag. _Just keep smiling,_ he told himself.

“Hi, Louis,” Sarah said, apparently disregarding the utter ridiculousness of his greeting. “Do you have a second?”

“For you, I might even have a whole minute. What’s up?”

“It’s about Niall,” she said. “I just - I haven’t heard from him lately. Or, at all. Ever since our date. And it’s kind of confusing me because I thought we got on really well even though it was kind of awkward at the start, and we had a laugh and he said he wanted to take me out again some time. I could have killed you for the first half hour or so but I thought maybe I’d managed to turn it around. Only it’s been a while and he hasn’t sent me a single text so I don’t know if he was just being nice or if I fucked up in the last five minutes and made him change his mind about me.”

She looked anxiously at him, twisting the strap of her bag in her fists. As she wrapped it around her fingers, they started to turn white from the pressure. She looked so forlorn that Louis suddenly wanted to go back to the flat and kick Niall’s door down.

“Oh,” Louis said. “Well - he’s been really busy lately…”

He’d said the wrong thing; she immediately looked away. “You don’t have to sugar-coat it. He wasn’t interested. No big deal.”

“No! No, it’s not that at all!”

She gave him a look that clearly said she thought he was talking out of his arse. Well. He kind of was. But Niall had admitted that he liked Sarah, that he’d enjoyed their date, and whatever reason he had for not texting her was not good enough for Louis.

“Look,” he said. “Niall’s a strange guy. He’s shy. He’s spent the past week constantly agonizing over whether or not to text you, but he doesn’t want to text you first because he thinks he’s bothering you. I’ve watched him type out whole paragraphs, really cute stuff, and then delete all of it. He thinks you’re really cute; that’s why he doesn’t want to blow it.”

This was an exaggeration at best and a brazen lie at worst. Louis had seen Niall sneakily looking at Sarah’s twitter and facebook and even, several times, her instagram, but he hadn’t shown any inclination to do anything more than that, and it was Louis’ humble opinion that he needed a kick up the arse to get him moving. His friends had spent enough time ribbing him about mooning after Harry that he had no sympathy for Niall’s plight. At least he hadn’t stalked Harry on social media rather than talking to him (the fact that Harry didn’t seem to _have_ any social media obviously had nothing to do with that). Regardless, Sarah looked slightly mollified. Louis hoped that he wasn’t overdoing the innocent look. Truth be told, he was tired of watching Niall clam up every time Sarah was mentioned, of seeing him scroll extra fast past her name in his contacts. He had no idea why Niall was dragging his heels so hard about her; if he genuinely hadn’t liked the look of her, he would not have been shy about saying so. All he could assume was that it was either laziness, or that Niall really was shy - an idea that seemed laughable, but he’d had one girlfriend in his entire life and the relationship had lasted several years. His dating skills were bound to be rusty. Well, if Niall wasn’t going to grab a cloth and dust them off, then Louis would do it for him.

“What are you doing right now?” he asked.

“Talking to you, standing out in the cold, breathing…”

“Ha. I meant what are you intending to do after this conversation?”

She shrugged. “I’ve got no plans.”

“Excellent,” said Louis. “How do you fancy paying our Niall a surprise visit?”

“What?”

“Just drop in on him, unexpectedly. That way he doesn’t have time to work himself up about it.” _Or do a runner_ , Louis thought. “Come back to the flat with me. I’ll whip us up a snack and we can nip in and see Niall and get chatting.”

“I don’t want to bother him,” Sarah said, shifting her weight slightly. Her bag was dragging one shoulder down slightly, the strap still wound around her fingers showing slivers of whitened skin beneath.

“Niall’s a chill guy. He won’t mind.”

He crossed his fingers behind his back.

~*~

“Are you wanking are you wanking are you wanking please don’t be wanking - ”

Louis opened Niall’s door without knocking and poked his head around the doorway. Niall was sat on the bed, fully clothed, messing with his phone. Leaving Sarah in the hallway, Louis stepped into the room.

“Jesus,” he said. “I’m almost starting to hope I _will_ catch you wanking. Your dick must be wasting away in there. It must be the size of a green bean by now. And your balls must be like fucking watermelons.” He eyed Niall’s crotch. “Big blue watermelons.”

“My dick and balls are fine, thanks,” said Niall. “And just because everyone’s caught you wanking at least once - ”

“I’ll have you know that in the past month or so, I’ve walked in on Perrie, Liam, Jesy and Jade, and they were all wanking,” Louis said.

“At the same time?”

“Obviously not. You’re the freak here, Niall. Your dick is going to get vitamin D deficiency; it never sees the light of day.”

“At least I know it won’t drop off from overuse,” Niall said cheerfully. “What do you want, anyway? It’s not like you to use the front door.”

“Brought someone round. You don’t mind, do you? Thought we could use the company; we only ever seem to see each other in this shithole.”

“Sure,” Niall said. “The more the merrier.”

“Great,” Louis said brightly, and he opened the door again, grabbed Sarah by the sleeve and pulled her in. He shut the door behind her with a snap. “I believe you’ve made this lovely lady’s acquaintance before.”

“Hi,” Sarah said, with a little wave.

The smile was wiped off Niall’s face like doodles being cleaned off a whiteboard, in one sudden sweep. The tension in the room was palpable. Niall glowered at Louis, whilst Louis smiled innocently back. Sarah fidgeted slightly. It was not the reception Louis had expected; he’d been hoping for some blushing, maybe an embarrassing soppy grin. Instead, the moment was uncomfortably reminiscent of the first time he’d introduced them. Niall was beginning to give the impression that he was a grumpy git who hated starting conversations. To his surprise, Louis found himself being annoyed by this. He knew damn well that Niall could play nice when he wanted to.

“Sarah,” Niall said through gritted teeth, “this is unforgivably rude of me, but could you give us a moment?”

“Er, sure,” said Sarah.

Getting up off the bed, Niall caught Louis by the arm and steered him into the wardrobe, his grip fierce. The doors clattered shut behind them.

“What the fuck?” Niall whispered.

“What?”

“Do you not know what ‘no’ means? I’ll give you a hint: it means _no_!”

“I don’t see what your problem is, mate. You were never gonna grow some balls and message her, you seemed content just to stalk her instagram like some kind of weirdo so I thought I’d bring her to you. You even said you liked her and you had fun on your date, so what’s the issue here? She’s a nice girl.”

“I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, Louis, but that doesn’t mean I want you to bring someone round that I’ve been on one date with, which I never agreed to in the first place, and try and get me to shag her.”

“I didn’t bring her round so you could shag her!” Louis said, and then realized he’d probably said that a bit too loudly. “I don’t care if you fuck her. Actually, I do; I feel bad for your balls, they must be a horrible colour, but that’s besides the point. I didn’t bring her round so you could fuck her; I brought you round so you could get to know her and stop being a prick!”

“You never learn, do you? You went off on one when Perrie was making you fake tinder accounts and asking cute guys on the street if they were gay, but you’d happily bring random girls into my flat when I’ve already said I’m not interested - ”

“You never said you weren’t interested - ”

“I _heavily implied_ that I wasn’t interested!”

“But you _are_ interested! You said she was cute!”

“Cute, yes. That doesn’t mean I want to go out with her, or shag her, or whatever it is you expect me to do - I’m not _you_ , Louis!”

“Excuse me, I would _never_ shag a girl,” Louis said affronted.

It was a mark of how thoroughly unimpressed Niall was that he didn’t laugh.

“Look, I’m just trying to help you, Niall. I know I’m probably doing it all wrong, but I don’t want you locked up in here on your own all the time. You’re not good enough company for that. I know I couldn’t spend that much time on my own without driving myself up the wall. Sarah’s nice, she’s funny, she’s attractive. What’s not to like? I’m sure there’s plenty, she’s human after all, she probably farts in bed and steals all the covers and hates all your favourite movies - but you won’t find out unless you try!”

Niall looked at him suspiciously. Or at least, Louis thought he did. It was hard to tell, in the dark.

“I’m not asking you to have sex with her,” Louis said gently. “I’m asking you to ask her out on a date. Text her some of your dodgy jokes. Get to know her a bit better. _Then_ have sex with her. Maybe.”

“You’re the biggest pain in the arse I’ve seen since you showed me that Mr. Harry XXL dildo on the Ann Summers website,” Niall said.

“But you still love me.”

Niall sighed, then flung open the door of the wardrobe and stepped back into the bedroom.

Sarah was sat on the bed where they’d left her, but she’d picked up a comic book off the bedside table and was idly flicking through it. As they emerged, she looked up.

“Okay,” Niall said, holding his hands up. “So I’ve been a bit of a shit. I do like you. Like, a lot. I’m just really bad at the whole dating thing. And if we do this, we’re gonna have to take it slow… like, old granny crossing the road slow. Like…” He glanced across at where Louis was leaning against the wardrobe, watching with his arms folded. “Er. Mate. Do you mind?”

“Nope,” Louis said cheerfully.

“We’re trying to have a conversation here.”

“Yep, and I don’t trust you not to be a dick, so I’m your chaperone. You say anything stupid, and I’m going to stand on your foot. Or maybe slap you across the back of the head. I haven’t decided yet.” He smiled. “No pressure.”

“Brilliant,” said Niall. “Just what I’ve always wanted, an audience, while I try to ask a girl out on a date. Sarah, do you want to go somewhere? Like, right now. The cinema, maybe. Or the pub. Or just outside, anywhere where we can get rid of this prick.” He jerked a thumb at Louis, who waggled his fingers in a sarky wave.

“Yes,” said Sarah, who had perked up very quickly, considering how small she’d looked when she’d approached Louis earlier. “Let’s go to the pub and I can tell you the embarrassing story of how Louis and I met and he wouldn’t stop shouting ‘PENIS!’ to get my attention. Louis, if you come with us, I will buy the smelliest, stickiest drink I can get my hands on and within ten seconds you will be wearing it.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” said Louis. “It’s nice to know how much you enjoy my company.”

“Louis,” said Niall. “Piss off.”

“With pleasure,” Louis said, and he bowed, sweeping off an imaginary top hat which he tipped in their direction. “Have fun, kiddies. While you’re canoodling over the cocktails, I’m going to be in my room, watching netflix and eating pringles. Aren’t you glad you’re finally getting a life, Niall?”

“I’m going to _end_ your life in a minute if you don’t fuck off.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going,” said Louis, and he climbed into the wardrobe.

Once he was back in his room, however, Louis found he was no longer in the mood to slob around eating pringles. In fact, he found himself rather jealously imagining Niall and Sarah walking hand in hand to the pub, buying drinks, and spending time together, while Louis himself sat in his room like a loser. Alone.

Matchmaking, he reflected, was a great way to make yourself feel like a lonely bastard. All of a sudden, he missed Harry. Apart from a few glimpses in the street, brushing past each other in the corridor and the other day, when they’d both been in the kitchen at the same time, Harry doing the washing up and Louis eating cereal out of a mug, they’d had no contact. Louis craved him. His smile, the sweet smell of him, being cuddled up close to him. The slow, soothing sound of his voice like melted chocolate being drizzled languidly over his eardrums.

Louis was not in the habit of denying himself things that he wanted, a long as they were easily within his reach. Harry was just a couple of wardrobes away, so it did not take him long to make up his mind and a minute or so later he was inside Harry’s wardrobe, hovering, tingling with anticipation at seeing him again. Raising his hand to knock, he waited for a moment as excitement fizzed through his veins, dancing down his spine and making his heart beat a little faster. It was embarrassing that just the prospect of talking to Harry had got him so excited, but there was no one there to mock him for it but himself.

For another few seconds, Louis enjoyed the sensation of making himself wait, and then he gave in to it and knocked.

There was a long pause filled with that same tingly excitement like lemonade in his veins, and then the door swung open and he was almost blinded by a ray of light that burst forth and stabbed him in the eyes. Squinting, he put a hand up to shield himself, and then a gangly figure poked its head through the doorway, cutting off the light source. Louis found himself grinning embarrassingly and resisted the urge to try and hide it, which would have been even more embarrassing.

“Louis? Is that you?”

“The one and only,” said Louis.

“What are you doing in my wardrobe?”

“I’m looking for Narnia. What do you think I’m doing in your wardrobe? I’m here to see you, silly. Budge over, I can’t get out with you hanging in the doorway.”

“Why can’t you come through the front door like normal people?” Harry asked, but he moved obligingly out of the way so that Louis could slide into the room and shut the door behind him, appreciatively inhaling the smell of peppermint and -

“Is that bacon?”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry said, “I’m not hungry, knock yourself out,” and he offered Louis a plate with a bacon butty resting delicately in the centre, crispy folds just peeping out of the edge of the bread.

Louis almost came right then and there. Taking the plate as though it held the crown jewels rather than a particularly tasty looking bacon butty, he examined it rapturously before cramming half of it into his mouth in one go. Harry winced, but let it go. It was probably gross, but Louis had spent so much time with Niall that the sight of seeing someone devour a whole sandwich in the manner of a boa constrictor no longer fazed him, and both Jesy and Perrie had a habit of nicking food off your plate if it didn’t vanish quickly enough. Quick eating was a necessity in their flat, especially at certain times of the month. Apparently he’d picked up some bad habits.

“Thowwy,” Louis said through a mouthful of bread.

Despite his evident revulsion, Harry was too polite to comment on Louis’ table manners - or rather, _bedside_ table manners, as he dropped crumbs all over the floorboards and put the plate down on the unit, narrowly missing one of Harry’s expensive-looking textbooks. 

“So what do you have against doors?”

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to keep this whole thing a secret,” Louis pointed out. “Plus, it’s illicit. Sexy. I don’t know what else you want me to do, unless you’d rather I climbed up onto your balcony like Spiderman, and I don’t think I’d look good in a suit that tight.”

“I’ve never seen Spiderman,” Harry said absentmindedly as he picked up the plate and moved it out of harm’s way.

Louis almost choked on what was left of his bacon butty. “You haven’t - you - what?”

Harry looked up warily. “I haven’t…seen Spiderman?”

“You mean the new ones, with Andrew Garfield?” Louis said sternly.

“Er… any.”

“You haven’t seen _any_ Spiderman films?”

“No?”

Louis flung himself down on the bed in horror. For a moment he made a great show of pretending to be passed out on the bed, one hand thrown across his face, and after a suitable pause he sat up, almost smacking his nose into Harry’s forehead since Harry had leaned down to make sure he was all right. Jerking back, Harry looked like a startled deer.

“We have to rectify this immediately,” said Louis. “I’ll get the DVDs. You bring the snacks and boyish enthusiasm.”

“But,” Harry said, and his gaze flickered over to the abandoned textbook.

“Nope,” said Louis, grabbing his chin. “I’m putting you on a time out. No more studying until you’ve watched at least the first Amazing Spiderman movie. I don’t have the originals with me, but if you ever get the chance, do not under any circumstances watch Spiderman 3 starring Tobey Maguire. It’s a travesty. We don’t talk about Spiderman 3.”

He watched Harry very carefully, as his teeth caught at a loose piece of skin on his lip and he bit it, tearing a strip off. Apparently not realizing he’d done it, he started chewing at another and Louis watched a tiny bead of blood appear. Reaching up, he thumbed it away, the blot of read smearing across the pad of his thumb and into the whorls of his fingerprint, and Harry blinked at him before putting his tongue out to prod at where he’d been worrying at his lip. A rueful smile caught at his mouth.

Louis caught him taking one last glance at the textbook before he visibly took a deep breath, and released it, his shoulders loosening.

“Okay,” he said.

Louis couldn’t help the huge grin that burst across his face. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I’ve got some Haribos in the drawer - or I could nip to the shops for some microwaveable popcorn?”

“That sounds great,” Louis said. “Meet you back here in twenty?”

Harry nodded, and picked up his coat off the back of his chair. Then, he paused, hovering as though he were expecting Louis to say or do something else. Uncertainly, Louis moved towards the wardrobe - maybe Harry wanted him to leave first? - but as he reached for the door, Harry caught his wrist, stopping him.

There was a furrow in his forehead and his thumb danced over the back of Louis’ hand, leaving a sensation of sparks leaping across the skin in the wake of his touch. Heart throbbing painfully, Louis looked at him. Then, his heart seized up so hard he stopped breathing for a moment, as Harry leaned in and kissed him.

It was a fleeting kiss, but it was the first real move that Harry had made to initiate anything between them, and as his hand cupped lightly around Louis’ jaw, pulling him closer, Louis melted into him. They parted too quickly, Louis’ mouth hanging open for a moment too long after Harry had pulled away, and he saw satisfaction flare up on Harry’s face, rapidly followed by amusement. Louis could only imagine how shell-shocked he looked, mouth hanging open, and he thought that it must have been great revenge for Harry to throw him like that, the way Louis had done to him when he kissed him the night they met. Just when Louis was starting to wonder what the hell was going on, Harry cheekily patted him on the cheek and Louis decided the world had officially gone mad, because Harry Styles was quiet and polite and studious, he did not go round surprising people with kisses or playfully slapping their cheeks. Bewildered, he stared at this stranger, and Harry raised his eyebrows.

“Be right back,” he said.

As the door closed behind him, Louis shook his head vigorously to clear it, amazed at himself for going so soft over just a kiss, and not even a particularly daring one. There hadn’t even been any tongue. Amused at himself, he went to go and fetch the DVDs.

It didn’t take him more than a minute to go and get them; by this point he was getting good at navigating the wardrobes, dodging the detritus people left in the bottom of them, pushing aside clothes, and it helped that at that time of day most people were in lectures so he didn’t have to stop to apologise for barging in on someone, or make an excuse for why he was going through. Laying the DVDs on the bed, Louis paused.

Harry’s laptop lay on the desk, his cork-board was plastered with notes and photographs and his bed covered in pillows. Kicking off his shoes, Louis lay spread-eagled on the bed to look up at the ceiling, only to find that Harry had even plastered bullet-pointed notes pages on the roof. Crackers. You couldn’t even read them from up there. He’d filled pages and pages of painstaking bullet-points, all highlighted in various colours. Sighing, Louis reached underneath the bed to turn on the fairy lights around the headboard, and that was when his fingers brushed against something soft.

Intrigued, he stuck his head under the bed, only to find that Harry had a ridiculous amount of blankets and spare pillows under there, many of them with arty quotes or photographs printed on them, like he needed to have dozens of interchangeable hipster decorations stowed away to change around whenever he felt like it. Still, Louis thought, he spent a lot of time in this room, he needed to feel comfortable in it. On his knees under the bed, Louis ran his fingers over a faux fur throw and a white tasselled pillow with ‘mind over matter’ printed over it in slender text. He even found a couple of pillows shaped like animals, which was adorable. These were more worn, and Louis found himself surprisingly endeared by the idea of Harry carting all his worn old animal pillows to uni, too sentimental to leave them behind. Pulling out piles of neatly folded blankets from under the bed, Louis had to admire Harry’s ingenuity. The heating in their building was shoddy at best, and often gave up the ghost at inopportune times, leaving everyone freezing. Jade once swore she’d seen her breath after one time the heating had gone off. Most people shivered, complained, and bore it; Harry had a dozen different blankets and cushions to cuddle up in.

That was when he had a rather brilliant idea.

~*~

Harry returned with a plastic bag full of snacks just as Louis was putting the finishing touches to the blanket fort, using one of the longer pillows to prop up the fluffy throw that acted as a roof. He had the satisfaction of watching Harry stop in the doorway and just stare for a moment at Louis’ handiwork. In the twenty minutes it had taken Harry to nip to the corner shop and back, Louis had created an igloo out of blankets and pillows, turning it into a proper cave with the comfiest pillows propped up against the headboard. On his lap he held Harry’s laptop, already switched on with the first DVD playing the menu screen on loop. With the fairy lights behind him and a heap of blankets covering his legs, Louis felt cosy, cute, and more than a little bit smug.

“Wow,” said Harry.

“What do you think?” Louis asked.

“I think it’s gonna take ages to clear all that up afterwards,” said Harry, but he took off his coat and shoes and climbed into the bed without further complaint, passing Louis the bag of snacks and pulling the blankets over himself.

He was cold from being outside; Louis squealed as Harry nuzzled the tip of his cold nose against Louis’ neck, and then shivered for an entirely different reason when Harry kissed his neck. Together, they sank back into the pillows, Louis unwittingly serving as a radiator as Harry snuck icy hands up inside his shirt and onto his back, stealing his warmth. Louis squawked irritably, pinching his arms and slapping at his cold hands and trying to ignore the intense burning sensation that was left in the wake of his freezing fingerprints. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

“So how much do you know about Spiderman?” Louis asked as the movie loaded.

“Uh,” Harry said. His breath ruffled the hair at the nape of Louis’ neck, tickling him; self-consciously, he tugged at the lengthening strands. He needed a haircut. “He gets bitten by a radioactive spider and shoots webs everywhere? And something about great power and responsibility.”

“Oh, my sweet child,” Louis said, patting him on the head. “You have so much to learn.”

As the movie started, Harry leaned in and murmured, “Thanks for doing this. I just…thanks.”

“Shh!” Louis scolded. “It’s starting.” But the arm around Harry’s shoulders tightened.

As was his habit when introducing people to things he loved, Louis found himself paying more attention to Harry than Andrew Garfield, even when he put on the suit and started showing off his body every other scene. Gratifyingly, Harry didn’t so much as touch his phone; he laughed at the funny scenes, popcorn spilling from his mouth, jumped whenever there were scary bits, and squeezed Louis almost painfully hard when Uncle Ben started bleeding out on the pavement. In a world of people who did not give Louis’ favourite shows and movies the attention they deserved, Louis was thankful to have Harry, who reacted just as Louis had hoped he would - including showing open fascination with Andrew Garfield’s arse, which Louis privately believed was the eighth wonder of the world. Topping Andrew Garfield was a private dream of Louis’, which he would never have dared to mention to any partner before Harry, even if they’d been together for ages - but despite the fact that this was only their second date, when he blurted this out, Harry merely paused the movie, looked solemnly at the arse in question and said “only if I can watch.”

He was perfect, Louis thought. In every way.

After the movie was over, Harry didn’t even protest when Louis put the second one on, even though it was getting dark outside and he hadn’t stressed about studying in several hours, which had to be some kind of record. Neither of them got up to switch the lights on, cocooned in the blanket fort which started collapsing about halfway through the first film, so that it ended up being more of a blanket heap than anything else. They ignored this. There was something nice about sitting in the dark with the light from the screen and the fairy lights being the only thing to illuminate the room, throwing the planes of Harry’s face into sharp relief so that he was all angles and lines - except when he threw his head back and laughed, and at those points Louis usually couldn’t help kissing him, tasting his happiness like the warmth of sunshine on his face. He was falling too fast, he knew. This kind of casual intimacy shouldn’t have come upon them so quickly. But he couldn’t help the feeling that Harry was…not a missing piece of him, Louis had never been anything but whole. More like an extension. He made him into something more.

They were three quarters of the way through The Amazing Spiderman 2, and Harry was crying all over him and getting his shirt very soggy, when it dawned on Louis that he’d wasted twenty minutes building a blanket fort when he could have been retrieving the weed out of Harry’s bathroom.

He stiffened, disgusted with himself at the oversight. What better opportunity would he have to move it than the one he’d just thrown away? Not wasted, because this had made Harry happy, and made Louis happy to see him that way…but God, what a stupid thing to do, to just _forget_ that he’d hidden a hundred quid’s worth of an illegal substance under Harry’s floorboards! That in an indirect way, that was what had got them together in the first place, that kiss he’d landed on Harry that first night and the time he’d pounded on his door and unexpectedly been let in, when he’d only meant to check Harry was away before going to get it.

Noticing the tension in him, Harry lifted his head. “Sorry,” he whispered, voice cracking slightly from disuse. “I’ll - I’ll get a tissue - ”

“No,” Louis said, and tightened his grip. “Don’t - don’t go.”

“Oh,” Harry said softly, and he obediently relaxed back against Louis, curled up against him and making his guilt burn even more fiercely, like a fire starting in his guts.

~*~

It ruined the rest of the movie for him, as he ran the moment in his head over and over like a child watching a favourite video, refusing to put on anything else. This lie festering between them, he could have disposed of it, fixed the rot in their relationship that Harry never even knew about, and he never would have had to know. Once again he risked ruining everything, this time just because he’d forgotten. Furious with himself, Louis tried to keep his muscles loose but he was sure Harry noticed the change in him, the dissipation of his good mood. The atmosphere of the room had changed. The dim light was no longer romantic, but a good way to hide his stony expression as his annoyance blazed, turned inwards. _Idiot._

When the film was over and they were both stretching, muscles popping, he could see the hesitancy on Harry’s face as he looked at Louis out of the corner of his eye. If his change in mood was that palpable, then clearly he couldn’t act for toffee, Louis thought. Determined to put Harry at ease - and needing a moment to compose himself - he got up and said, “Toilet.” Empty wrappers tumbled to the floor, the result of their snacking.

“Sure,” said Harry.

He managed a smile, which Louis tersely returned, and then he stepped into the small bathroom to compose himself.

Kneeling down, he felt around for the right floorboard and pulled it up to check. All the weed was still there, but if he took it now, Harry would notice the bulges in his clothes, and the last thing he wanted was for Harry to find out about this now, when they were finally getting somewhere. Taking a deep breath, Louis replaced the board and then took a long, hard look at his ashen face in the mirror.

“Pull yourself together,” he said.

His reflection looked scathingly back at him.

Groaning, Louis rubbed his face in his hands and then went for a piss, trying to pull normality from somewhere deep within him, or at least a good pretence of it. When he got back out there, he needed to be normal again. In an attempt to distract himself, he looked around the room, admiring the cleanliness of it - the gleaming sink, the shower curtain with its astonishing lack of mould. Louis’ bathroom smelt like socks and mildew, and his shower curtain looked like some kid’s science project with moss growing all over it. Maybe some crustaceans.

He was just washing his hands when he noticed a selection of coloured orbs lined up on the window-sill, in a neat row, numerous bright colours. Drying his hands, Louis picked one up; it had a kind of gritty texture and some powder and glitter came off, clinging to his fingertips. He rubbed it experimentally between his fingers, and sniffed it; it smelled spicy. He tried another one, which smelt more like mint. Frowning, Louis set them down and then barged back into the bedroom, sufficiently distracted by the mysterious orbs to push down the loathing he felt at himself for having forgotten about the weed.

Harry was sat on his bed with the remnants of the fort collapsing around his ears and his nose buried in a textbook; he always seemed to do that, as if some kind of magnetic force bought his study notes shooting back into his hands the moment Louis left the room. When he looked up, it was with a guilty expression, like Louis had caught him wanking. Louis was satisfied enough to have dragged him away from his studying for enough time to watch two whole movies.

“H?”

“Hmm?” Harry said, shoving the book underneath a mound of pillows as though hoping Louis hadn’t noticed it.

“What are those weird orbs on your window sill?”

“Orbs?”

“Yeah. Round ball things. They smell weird, and bits of dust come off when you touch them.” He held up his newly glittery fingers to demonstrate.

“Oh!” Harry’s face cleared. “You mean my bath bombs?”

“Eh?” said Louis. “Sounds dangerous to me.”

“You’ve never heard of a bath bomb?” demanded Harry.

“Should I have?”

“Oh my God.” Leaping off the bed, Harry grabbed his hand. “You poor thing. You haven’t lived. C’mere c’mere c’mere come come come!”

He frogmarched a bewildered Louis into the bathroom, put the toilet seat down with a flourish and pushed Louis down to sit on it, bowing as though he had just seated him on a golden throne. Blinking, Louis watched as Harry pored over the row of powdery balls, with the air of someone trying to pick a delicious cake from a selection in a shop window.

After a moment or two of deliberation, he selected one that looked to Louis almost like a globe, a turquoise colour shot through with bright pink and a few splashes of white and green. Harry held it aloft like he was Rafiki from the Lion King, presenting Simba before the masses. The heroic look on his face was priceless; Louis bit his lip.

“This,” said Harry, “is called Intergalactic. It is beautiful. It’s like a God among men. A king among bath bombs. Or a queen.” He laid it out on the flat of his palm and held it out for Louis’ inspection. “This will change your life. This is heaven in a condensed powdery form. Explodey goodness, all for you.” He stared dreamily off into the distance. “I was saving it for a special occasion, but since we’re expected to live like Neanderthals here, without a bathtub, I haven’t been able to use it. I probably won’t until I get home…but I keep picking them up…”

Lost in a world of his own, he turned on the taps and ran water into the bathroom sink, filling it almost to the brim. After that, he held the bath bomb over the water, his eyes darting between the sink, and Louis, glee lighting up his face.

He dropped the bath bomb.

An explosion of colour erupted from the little ball immediately, foaming across the surface of the water like a firework going off under the sea. Fizzing, the bomb chugged around the sink, spinning wildly, emitting puffs of colourful foam in its wake. It reminded Louis of the trails left by aeroplanes, but far wilder. Entranced, he watched as the bath bomb slowly dwindled into nothing, a pepperminty smell filling the room as colour seeped into the water. Glitter sparkled just below the surface.

“There’s nothing like seeing a man experience his first bath bomb,” said Harry with great satisfaction.

“It’s incredible!” said Louis, fascinated.

“You should see it in a proper bath. It’s absolutely unreal…and when you sink in and all the water covers you…God. It’s like an orgasm. A bath-gasm. It makes me feel like a mermaid.”

“A mermaid?”

“Yeah,” Harry said happily, and he slipped his fingers beneath the water, watching the blue foam close over them. Wiggling his fingers so that glittering water wove around him, he smiled. “A mermaid.”

“Not a merman?”

“Mermaids are prettier,” Harry said decisively.

They both stayed silent for a long while, watching as the bath bomb fizzled away into nothing. Eventually, Harry pulled his hand out. His fingers glistened.

“When I next go home,” he said, “I’m going to take all my bath bombs with me, and spend an entire week in the bath. I’ll use them all. I don’t care how long it takes. I want to turn into a wrinkly prune.”

Louis stifled a giggle. “You know, your fingers only do that because you’re absorbing all the moisture into your skin. You’re going to absorb the whole bath.”

“Good,” Harry declared. “I want to be a sponge. You can’t do homework in the bath.”

“Do you want to live in a pineapple under the sea, too?” Louis asked solemnly.

“Oh, fuck off,” said Harry, and splashed him.

Louis yelped as a spray of freezing cold water soaked his top, showering his face with frigid droplets that ran down his neck and down his back, dribbling down his chest and belly on one side and running down his arse crack on the other. It had been a well-aimed splash. For a moment all he could do was gape at Harry, who was giggling, the laundry basket creaking alarmingly where he was sitting on it. Louis hoped he fell in. Glaring, he pulled the wet fabric away from himself and cringed as a breeze drifted down his shirt, making him even colder.

“Stiff nips!” Harry yelled, and poked one of Louis’ admittedly very hard nipples.

“I’ll give you stiff nips!” said Louis, and he cupped his hands, filled them with water and threw it at Harry.

His aim was terrible; most of the water splashed to the floor and only a little actually hit Harry, making his hair wet. Shaking himself like a dog, Harry grinned and flicked more water at Louis. In response, Louis turned the tap on full blast and stuck his hand underneath the stream, and a jet of water shot at Harry, almost impossible to aim, but the water was rushing so fast that it soaked the entire room anyway, including Harry, who let out an extremely satisfying yelp.

Harry dived at him, getting hit full in the face by a deluge of tap water as he did so. He jostled the sink, which wasn’t attached very strongly to the wall, and bright blue water slopped onto the floorboards, leaving an enormous damp spot. Louis froze, wondering if the weed had been affected and also half expecting the ever conscientious Harry to object to the water damage, but Harry was too busy scrambling onto his knee and pinning him against the wall - or rather, against the toilet, which groaned in response to having both of them sit on it. Perched on Louis’ lap, Harry gave a wicked grin. His hair was plastered to his scalp, dripping steadily onto his shirt, which clung to his skin. It showed rather a pleasing amount of skin through the fabric, including the hard outline of his nipples and a taut stomach that Louis was extremely envious of. Louis had been freezing, but with a lap full of Harry, he quickly forgot about that. One thing he was rather aware of was all that warm weight pressed against him, and of the biggest grin he’d ever seen Harry wear. Lightly, Louis ran his hands down Harry’s back and without quite meaning to, squeezed his arse with both hands.

He was worried he’d overstepped a boundary - this was, after all, only their second date, technically - but Harry didn’t object, just repositioned himself in a less precarious position on Louis’ lap, with rather more wiggling than was probably necessary. In fact, it was practically grinding, the way he rubbed himself against Louis’ cock, and Louis tried valiantly to focus on how fucking freezing he was with water running down his back. Harry leaned forwards to press their foreheads together, and more drops of water fell onto Louis’ neck and chest, making him shiver. He squeezed Harry’s arse a little more daringly, and then his hands found Harry’s waist.

Surging forwards, he caught Harry’s lips in a kiss that was more frantic than he had intended it to be, their mouths working almost desperately, his tongue in Harry’s mouth. He could taste Harry’s breath, which tasted of popcorn and fizzy sweets, and Harry grabbed at his back with greedy fingers, raking at his skin through the shirt. Louis’ fingers found their way into Harry’s wet hair; he’d never considered hair to be a defining factor in whether or not he fancied a bloke, but there was something about Harry’s hair that was so fucking sexy, the silky way it slipped through Louis’ fingers - although wet, it just got knotted around his hands.

A new urgency had worked its way into their kissing, fierce and hot; he pulled Harry closer and found that it still wasn’t close enough. One small part of Louis was confused about what the hell was happening, where this new Harry who had water fights and made out in wet clothes had come from, but the rest of him didn’t give a shit, running his nails lightly up and down Harry’s stomach, feeling the lines of his skin through the soaked fabric. Fisting Harry’s hair, he pulled, and Harry’s breath stuttered.

Oh. Interesting.

Louis pulled again, and then rubbed experimentally at Harry’s scalp with his fingers, and Harry let out the most obscene moan Louis had ever heard from anyone who still had all their clothes on. Come to think of it, why _did_ they still have their clothes on?

Fastening his mouth onto Harry’s neck - _lightly, lightly, no marks_ , he chastised himself - he continued to tug at Harry’s hair with one hand and touch him with the other, fingers roaming greedily across his back, down to his arse, to his belly and then creeping up his chest, pulling at his jaw, just touching, everywhere, exploring every dripping wet inch of him. He wasn’t cold any more, and he was so fucking hard, rolling his hips up at every weak grind Harry made against him. Louis was sure he could do better than that, relinquished his grip on Harry’s hair to pull at his waist, try and make him grind down properly. They were both panting, Harry’s breath hot on his neck, Louis making little noises that he barely even recognised as his own. All he wanted was more - more kissing, more touching, Harry barely touching him at all, like he didn’t think he was allowed. Growling, Louis scraped his teeth against Harry’s neck and Harry let out a whine, his head falling back to expose the pale column of his throat, which Louis ghosted his fingers over, barely touching him at all. The worse kind of tease. He could feel Harry trembling against him, and he continued to brush his fingers against Harry’s skin so lightly that he could hardly have felt it, not increasing the pressure as he moved down, inexorably slowly, and popped the button of Harry’s jeans.

All of a sudden there was an iron grip on his wrist, stopping him from going any further. Confused, Louis opened his eyes, struggled to focus past the haze of want and need and the ache in his dick, begging for release.

“No,” said Harry.

_What?_ said Louis’ cock.

“Oh,” said Louis. “I - shit, sorry - what?”

He stared in utter bewilderment at Harry, who looked like he’d been fucked already, even though they’d only been making out for a couple of minutes at the most. His lips were obscenely swollen and glowed bright pink, his pupils huge dark blots with the slightest ring of green around them, and he was panting heavily. Louis’ could still feel that he was hard, his own body still responding, confused, and he had to scoot back a bit to keep himself from rolling his hips again.

“I’m sorry, I - did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Harry said breathlessly. “Fuck me, I want to. I really want to. But I don’t - not with people I don’t know.”

“You know me,” Louis said, a little hurt, and then immediately felt bad because that sounded a little like he was trying to talk Harry into it, and he didn’t mean it to come out that way.

“Not well enough,” Harry said apologetically. “I’m sorry, it’s just how I do things. I don’t feel right having sex with someone unless there’s a big emotional connection there, and I don’t think we’re at that stage yet.”

Louis took a very deep breath, trying to get control over himself. He was still so hard that it hurt, his body scrambling frantically to catch up with where his brain was at, failing to read the sign that said ‘calm down, boys, not today!’ If he was honest, this was not a situation he’d ever experienced before; in the past, his dick had never been particularly discerning. If the person he was getting off with was male, and up for it, his dick was in. Louis had never held off sex simply because he didn’t know the other person well enough, and yet it actually sounded far nicer than pounding some stranger into the wall of a toilet cubicle and not daring to say their name because he couldn’t remember if it was Mike or Milo. Not that they had ever necessarily told him their real names anyway.

“I’m really sorry,” Harry said, edging backwards like he was expecting Louis to start yelling at him.

“It’s fine, babe, I just need you to get up for a second so I can sort myself out,” Louis said.

“Sort - oh,” Harry said, and turned adorably pink. “Right.”

He stood up and turned around, and they both did some very indiscreet shuffling to try and get themselves back in some kind of order. The sink was almost empty, most of the glittery blue water all over the floor and all over Harry and Louis, leaving a film of bright blue silt in the bottom. Louis ran some water and splashed it onto his face, and kept it running over his fingers, so cold that it burned a little, and after a few seconds of that he felt distinctly more human. He also felt distinctly more cold; when they’d been grabbing at each other and pulling at each other’s clothes, he’d forgotten that he was covered in bath bomb water, but now it became rather evident, his hair spiking up in odd places and dripping more water onto his clothes. Harry was shivering slightly, arms wrapped around himself, his hair sleek against his scalp. It made his head look tiny; Louis almost laughed, but then his teeth chattered together particularly alarmingly and he decided he’d better not, in case he bit his tongue off by accident.

“Maybe we should get dried off,” he said.

“Probably,” Harry agreed. “And I should get back to work, I have an essay due… but thank you for coming round, Louis. It really means a lot to me. It helps, getting my mind off work for a while. I get stuck in a bit of a rut sometimes, I can’t focus on anything.”

“I,” Louis said grandly, “am an expert on doing things that don’t involve working.” He leaned in to kiss Harry, chastely this time, to keep them from going back to where they had left off. Something told him that it wouldn’t take much. “I’ll go dry off in my own room, yeah?”

“Okay,” Harry said softly.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” said Louis, before ducking back into the wardrobe.

~*~

He ended up jumping straight into the shower when he got back to his room, since the glitter had started drying onto his skin. Although he had no particular objection to glitter in itself, Louis was the kind of person who left a six foot pile of dishes on the draining board and used the same duvet for three months, gritty toast crumbs and all. He was not the kind of person to smell like mint and get covered in blue glitter.

As he lathered himself up with shower gel, shuddering as the hot water washed away the leftover tension from his shoulders where he’d been hunched up in the blanket fort, he started to think. Contemplating having a wank, he dismissed that; there would be time for that later, and he’d calmed down enough now that it wasn’t urgent. Instead, he thought about the weed.

Louis was a forgetful person, and he’d just proven that he couldn’t even remember something kind of important, like having a hidden stash of weed beneath his secret boyfriend’s floorboards. Things with Harry were just starting to get good, get comfortable. If it started getting serious, he didn’t want something like that hanging over his head, ready to fall on him at any time. An advantage of being Harry’s boyfriend was that he now had an excuse to ask nosy questions about his whereabouts; a disadvantage was that if he was caught smuggling the weed out of Harry’s room, he suspected he would not be Harry’s boyfriend for much longer.

He knew Harry worked on Saturdays between twelve and six. Unfortunately, Saturdays were usually designated hangover days, where Louis and the rest of his friends would lie around groaning in the kitchen, drinking black coffee and vowing never to drink again in the aftermath of the previous night’s revelry. Of course, he could just not drink on Friday night, but not drinking on a Friday night, as far as he was concerned, was like being in hospital without being sick. You could do it, but it was boring and tedious and you would spend the whole night resenting everyone you were with.

Other than that, he had a vague idea of when Harry’s lectures were, and a quick text at the right moment could confirm that. As long as they didn’t clash with Louis’ lectures, he would be fine.

By the end of the week, Louis vowed, he would have that weed out of Harry’s room and celebrate by getting too high to move. He wasn’t going to let anything get in his way this time.

Probably.


	8. Chapter 8

On Mondays, Harry had a lecture between twelve and three, which gave Louis plenty of time to sneak into his room and do what he needed to do. In his pocket, he had a packet of polo mints and a bottle of sparkly nail polish that he’d stolen from Perrie, so that in an emergency he could give them to Harry and pretend he’d come to leave him a surprise gift. It was a little shameless to give Harry someone else’s nail polish to cover up his own lie, but Louis’ student loan wouldn’t currently stretch to a little bottle of Barry M Glitterati in the shade ‘Fashion Icon’, and he hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it.

Harry’s room was quiet, but not eerily so - more like the quiet of walking down a country road when no one is around, than the black silence of the night. He’d left the window open a crack, so that the sound of birds singing could be heard faintly from outside, as well as the occasional hum of cars whipping past; a thin bar of light streamed through the gap and onto the floor, and Louis stepped over it as though it were a tangible thing, not wanting to sully it with his footprints.

It was stupid to linger, he knew, but there was something magical about being in Harry’s room whilst Harry wasn’t in it. Never before had he appreciated how much of himself Harry had poured into that small space, from the soft fairy-lights wound around the headboard - switched off, of course, whilst he was out - to the noticeboard, hung slightly crooked, pinned with notes and to-do lists, and scraps of paper that Louis had never been able to examine before. He’d only been in here a handful of times and whenever he went to investigate, Harry always distracted him, kissing his neck and gently pulling him away. Upon closer inspection, they seemed to be snippets of poems, some neatly printed, others scrawled, as though he hadn’t been able to get his thoughts down quickly enough. The ink was smudged on some of these; Louis wanted to touch them, to feel where Harry’s thoughts had leaked onto paper, but he was afraid to disturb them, so he just touched the glistening gold pins that held them in place, then moved over to the bed.

The Lush smell was diluted slightly by the breeze, but Harry’s bed still smelt like bath bombs, and sure enough, Louis could see a little glitter on the bedspread. The sheets had been smoothed; he wanted to lie down on the bed and breathe it all in, but he’d never be able to get everything back as neatly as Harry had organised it. Instead, he crossed over to the desk, where Harry’s notebooks lay, pens lying by them in rainbow order, and a tidy pile of textbooks lying just to the side - clean, unsullied books, not like the tattered second-hand editions that Louis had brought, fresh from ebay. Not for the first time, he thought about Harry’s parents, and how much money they must have. He knew that they were depicted in the photos hanging over the bed, but he didn’t like to look at the beaming woman with Harry’s smile, or the stepdad with the warm eyes. They looked like kind people, not like the sort of people who would forbid their son from having a life because they wanted him to get a Law degree. It was easier for him to imagine them as caricatures in his head; a jowly, scowling father who looked like the old Geography teacher who had told Louis he would never come to much; a stern mother with a Botox-smooth forehead and a cruel, perpetually lipsticked mouth. It confused him to try and imagine them as more than one-dimensional.

He had dithered for too long already, savouring all of the Harry in the room. Shaking his head, Louis made a beeline for the bathroom, and then froze as a heavy clunk emanated from the door, the sound of the key turning in the lock, and it swung open.

There was no time to hide; Louis could only stand there stupidly, blinking at the man who stood in the doorway, a man wearing a cardigan, with hair swept up into a sloppy quiff.

“Who the hell are you?” the man asked bluntly.

Shit. Louis recognized his voice, smooth but with a bitter edge, as though it had not been properly sanded off. It was Mike, the mysterious family friend who enforced Harry’s parents rigorous rules.

“Er,” said Louis.

“What are you doing in here? This is Harry’s room.”

“Er,” Louis said again. His brain had gotten stuck, like a CD, skipping over and over, screeching _shit, shit, shit._ He was afraid he might say it out loud by accident. “I’m Louis. I’m a friend of Harry’s.”

“How did you get in here?” Mike demanded. “The door was locked.”

_Shit._

“Was it?” Louis said. “Oh, no, I remember, it definitely wasn’t locked. I specifically remembered opening the door, and letting myself in, because it wasn’t locked.” He was blathering. “I mean, maybe it locked when I shut it, but it wasn’t locked when I came in. Obviously.”

“What are you doing in here?”

Mike asked a lot of questions. Louis felt like barking a few back at him - namely, _if the door was locked, how did_ you _get in?_ He didn’t quite dare.

“I came to borrow…er…a textbook. For Law. Harry and I are in the same class.” Growing in confidence, Louis said, “I ordered the book off ebay, but it hasn’t come yet, and I need it for an essay we’re working on, so Harry said I could borrow his. I knocked, but no one answered, and the door was open, so I thought I’d pop in and pick it up while he was out.”

“If you need it for an essay, then surely Harry needs it,” Mike said. He had unpleasant eyes, cold and shrewd, like a shark’s. Louis got the unpleasant feeling that those eyes could see straight through him.

“Oh, he’s already finished it,” Louis lied. “You know Harry, always working…We hardly ever see him, he’s always got his head buried in some textbook or another.”

Looking slightly mollified, Mike said, “Well. That’s all right, then. As long as he knows you’ve got it. But I wouldn’t make a habit of letting yourself into people’s rooms, if I were you,” he added. “People might start to talk.” He gave Louis a menacing look.

“Right,” Louis said. “Well. I’m just gonna. Go…”

He started backing towards the door, not wanting to turn his back on Mike, then he realized that must look suspicious, so he wheeled around and sped up. He was halfway out into the corridor when Mike called after him, “Louis!”

Freezing, Louis squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck. What had he done? Swallowing, he stepped back into the room.

“Yeah?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Louis stared at him, perplexed.

Mike pointed at the desk. “The textbook?”

“Oh. Right.”

Licking his lips, Louis picked up one of the textbooks, a fat tome with roman numerals in the title, and tucked it underneath his arm. Then, he walked out again, trying not to shudder at the feel of Mike’s fishy grey eyes on the back of his neck.

He was safely back in his dorm room before he had relaxed enough to consider the question of why the fuck Creepy Mike had a key to Harry’s room.

~*~

For several days, he didn’t dare to go through the wardrobes again, afraid that as soon as he poked his head into Harry’s room, a giant net would drop on his head, alarms blaring, a SWAT team bursting through the doors, led by Mike, wearing a hat that read ‘Fun Police’. That, and the fact that several other people were getting sick of him blundering through - the girl in the room next to Harry’s, for example, who owned a collection of plushies that he always seemed to trample on when he was stepping through the wardrobe, and a deaf boy who never heard him coming and always jumped out of his skin when Louis burst out of his wardrobe covered in clothes and cobwebs.

Then, there was the fact that he had to avoid all of his friends; Perrie and Jesy both lived between him and Harry and he had to make sure that they wouldn’t catch him walking through, or at least come up with a good excuse for why he was doing so. More than once, he’d been on his way to Harry’s when they were still in the room and ended up hanging out with them instead, firing off an apologetic text to cancel on their meeting. After that he got more wary and started trying to peek through the gap between the doors to make sure they weren’t there, but without announcing his arrival, it meant that he sometimes caught them unawares in their underwear. Not something he tried to make a habit for, and he always looked away as soon as possible, but it couldn’t always be helped.

But one day, luck smiled upon him, and he had a clean run straight through from his end of the building to Harry’s, knocking jauntily on the inside of the doors to give him some warning before he burst in.

“Why does Creepy Mike have a key to your room?”

“What?” Harry asked, looking up from where he had been sticking little sequins on his nails.

“He let himself in. I saw him. I was - I was in the corridor outside, and I watched him unlock your door and barge right in like he owned the place.”

“You’ve never met him,” Harry said with a frown. “How did you know it was him?”

“I recognized his voice.”

Harry squinted at him. Louis realized he was digging a rather large hole for himself and began struggling to claw his way out.

“I recognized his voice when I _spoke_ to him. I asked him what he was doing.”

“And what did he say?”

“Um,” said Louis. “He told me…to mind my own business.”

“Hmm,” said Harry, rolling his eyes. “That does sound very like Mike.” Using a tool to pick up another sequin, he carefully applied it to the centre of the nail, tip of his tongue sticking out in concentration.

Louis stared at him. “Babe. I just told you some psycho broke into your room and you’re just sitting there gluing glitter to your nails? He could have been doing anything! Planting voodoo dolls! Sniffing your pillows! Collecting DNA samples!”

“Mike’s not a psycho,” Harry said. “He’s overprotective, that’s all. He cares about my parents. And me,” he added as an afterthought.

“Yeah, that’s reassuring. I’m sure stalkers care about their victims too.”

“Louis, he isn’t a stalker. Are you sure you don’t have an ulterior motive for disliking him?”

“Well I have to admit that being bundled into a cupboard the first time we were almost introduced didn’t exactly warm me to him. Oh, and there’s the fact that he’s a massive prick. I have noticed a direct correlation between Dickhead Harry and Creepy Mike, in that they seem to be bosom buddies and whenever Creepy Mike shows up, Dickhead Harry rears his cockhead and comes back in full force.”

Harry’s mouth twitched. “Dickhead Harry isn’t all bad. He passes exams, doesn’t he?”

“I get the feeling you aren’t taking this very seriously,” said Louis.

“I just think it’s cute, seeing you get all protective over me. Look, my family dynamic is very different to a lot of people’s. I’m still the baby. It might seem weird to you that my family keep checking up on me and making sure I’ve got my head down, but I asked them to, remember? I know it seems like they’re being really harsh on me, but I don’t trust myself to work without having someone breathe down my neck to make sure I’m doing it. A lot of this pressure is self-imposed, they’re just doing what I told them to do. And Mike is…kind of intense. I’ll give you that. He’s just looking out for me.”

“Well, I think he’s a serial killer.”

“You would,” Harry said, looking down at his nails with a pleased expression. “What do you think of this colour?”

His nails were bright blue, the colour of the bath bomb he’d dropped in the sink on their second date. The memory made Louis smile. He’d carefully laid clear sequins on top of the wet polish, so that his nails looked to be covered in shimmering scales.

“They look like mermaid nails,” he said.

Harry’s whole face lit up with delight. “Yeah! That was the idea! Do you like them?”

“They look amazing,” Louis said truthfully, imagining the look on his sisters’ faces if he could do their nails like that. With a pang of regret, he thought that it would never happen; Louis was too cack-handed to create such a delicate effect. If he even tried, he’d end up smudging polish all over their fingers and spilling all the sequins. Still, he thought, maybe one day Harry would meet his sisters and he could do it for them.

Louis wasn’t sure what made him say it, other than maybe the flushed look of pride on Harry’s face, but he found himself saying, “Will you do mine?”

Harry’s mouth fell open “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, “why not? I won’t be able to keep them nice for more than five minutes, but I want you to do them anyway.”

Harry kissed him on the cheek with excitement and immediately started picking through the supplies on his bed, picking up a clear bottle, the bright blue bottle he’d used on his own nails, and the little tool he’d been sticking the sequins on with.

“This colour is going to look so good on you,” he said excitedly. “I haven’t had much practice on other people if I’m being honest, but I really want to get better - give me your hand?”

Louis offered Harry’s hand and watched with amusement as Harry carefully coated his nails with a clear base coat, in slow but professional swipes, the tip of his tongue pointing out ever so slightly with concentration. There was something weirdly intimate about the warmth of Harry’s fingers on his, the concentration he was investing in this. If he opened up Harry’s head and peeped into his brain, Louis thought that in that moment, he wouldn’t see any worries floating around, every bit of Harry focused on the task of painting Louis’ nails. When he took the brush away, Louis’ little bitten stubs looked shiny and nice, even though they were ragged and had dirt underneath them.

“We should probably have cleaned all the gunk from underneath them first,” Harry said like he’d read his mind, “but my polish is still drying and I don’t want to wreck it scraping around under your nails.”

Louis tutted. “Unprofessional. I won’t be coming here again if my nail technician is more concerned with the state of his own nails than mine. What am I not paying you for?”

“I’m not a nail technician,” Harry said, although he looked secretly pleased, “I just make it up as I go along. But I do know that your nails are an absolute mess. You shouldn’t use your nails as tools, Louis.”

“What else are they for? …You sounded really like my sister when you said that, you know. She’s always telling me stuff like that. She’s training to be a make-up artist, she’s really good. Nails aren’t her thing, though. I thought all that stuff was lumped in together, but it’s a separate qualification, apparently.”

“Yeah, I’m no good at make-up,” Harry said. “I like how it looks but I can never get it to look right on me, and I always mess it up… what are you _doing_?”

Louis paused guiltily, caught in the act of blowing on his nails.

“Huh?”

“Don’t do that, it makes them take far longer to dry,” Harry scolded, swatting at his raised hand. “All your moist wet breath all over them makes the polish go funny. If you really can’t wait thirty seconds for them to dry off, stick your fingers in some cold water, it hardens the polish faster. Come here.” He pulled Louis’ right hand closer to his face to examine the damage.

“I thought you were meant to blow on them.”

“Common misconception,” said Harry, gingerly touching his thumbnail to check that the base coat was dry, before beginning to swipe blue enamel onto Louis’ nails. “I’m the expert, here. Don’t do anything to these without my say-so.”

“Yes, sir,” said Louis.

Harry had done his own nails with relative ease, but he was more careful over Louis’, brow furrowed with concentration as he put on the first coat of blue and then tidied up the edges with a cotton bud dipped in nail varnish remover, leaving stark, neat lines behind. Louis’ nails were poorly taken care of, bitten and ripped and he had hangnails galore, with made him flinch when nail varnish remover got into them, but he still found the process relaxing. As he worked, Harry kept on a steady stream of easy conversation, telling Louis about how to remove the painful hangnails and chattering away about buffing and filing like he did this every day. A little in awe, Louis just did his best to listen and look like he understood what Harry was talking about.

“You’re good at this,” he said as Harry eased the first blue sequin onto his thumbnail, nudging it into place with a metal device the size of a toothpick. “You should do this for parties and that, make a shit ton of money.”

“Mm,” Harry said vaguely. “I’m not actually that good, you know. My technique is shite, you aren’t supposed to do it like this.”

“Whatever works, though, right?” Louis said, admiring the shimmer coming off Harry’s own nails.

When Harry was finished and Louis was obediently sat waiting for his nails to dry, thinking to himself that he didn’t know the last time he’d sat still for so long without fidgeting or complaining, he was surprised to find that he liked the look of his nails more than he’d expected to. Louis had never thought of himself as being into that kind of shit; nail varnish chipped and peeled off, and make-up smudged and smeared and often made you look like a greasy alien up close. But then again, Louis had only ever been made up by pudgy little-girl fingers - or, later on, shaking teenage ones, giggly over putting pretty things on their older brother, not quite taking it seriously. He had endured many smudgy manicures and stabs in the eyes from mascara wands, and sticky cheap lip-gloss daubed on his mouth that had been free on the front of teen magazines, tasted like plastic cherries and made his mouth feel funny. This was artistic. Even once they were dry, he kept looking at them, holding his fingers up to the light to see them shimmer, watching the reflections of the sequins dance across the walls like he had disco balls on his finger tips. It seemed to please Harry to catch him doing it; every time he gave a little proud smile.

They played Mario Kart 7 for an hour or so; Louis had thought to be the only one to have brought his 3DS to university, maybe the only one around his age who even owned one, but Harry had surprised him by not only voluntarily getting his out, but by being an absolute fiend at the game. Zooming around rainbow road again and again, gleefully insulting each other and pelting one another with bombs and red shells and banana skins, they battled to the death. Louis won in the end, but only because he sensed defeat on the horizon and sank his teeth into Harry’s arm mid-race, making him yell in pain and accidentally steer into a wall. Louis sailed past the finish line with a chorus of triumphant insults, which culminated in a wrestling match where Harry tried to exact his revenge for the cheating and Louis proved that size was no indicator of the winner in a contest like that. When it was over, they were both red-faced, sweaty, and Harry had several bite marks on his arms and also on his neck. Around that point, Louis decided to call it a day in case things progressed. He didn’t want Harry to think he was some kind of raging sex fiend, putting him off guard with manicures and Mario Kart and then pouncing.

“I’d better get going,” he said, kissing the tip of Harry’s nose and then scooting back a few inches.

“Oh,” Harry said, palpably disappointed. “Already?”

“’Fraid so. I’d hate you to get sick of me.”

“I won’t,” Harry said.

That made something catch in Louis’ chest. For a moment, he waited, suddenly unwilling to follow through on the whole leaving thing. Instead, he wanted to sink back down onto the bed with Harry and exchange lazy kisses until their mouths felt bruised, to run his fingertips up and down Harry’s arm and watch the little hairs there stand on end. It almost physically hurt him to get up off the bed, trying to look nonchalant, when all he wanted to do was lie back down with him for a while.

“Hey,” Harry said. “You should - you should take that off.”

For a bizarre moment, Louis thought Harry was talking about his clothes, and wondered when the fuck he’d changed his mind about that - then he remembered his nails, gleaming aquatic blue.

It produced a strange sinking feeling in him - he didn’t want to take the polish off and look at his own ragged, boring nails again. They looked nice how they were, perfect and shiny, with not even a chip. Not only did he hate the thought of wasting the polish and sequins, but he liked having a momento of their day together, so that all he had to do was look at his hands and then he would remember Harry’s happy face and the comforting low buzz of his voice as he painted Louis’ fingernails.

“I was actually kind of hoping I could keep them,” Louis said, feeling a little embarrassed. “For a bit.”

Harry frowned at him. “Why?”

“I dunno. I like them. They look nice.”

Opening his mouth, Harry closed it again. He looked like he was struggling to decide what to say. “I’m glad you feel that way,” he said carefully, “and they look really good on you, but if people see them they’re going to wonder where you got them done. No offence, but you don’t seem like the type to go to a salon for it, and I don’t think anyone will believe that you could have done them like that yourself. It’d raise a lot of awkward questions.”

“I suppose so,” Louis said. He looked disconsolately at his nails, trying to convince himself to say goodbye, that it was stupid to be upset over scrubbing off some polish, it was just a few sequins and some blue paint, that was all - but he wanted them. It made him feel like a stroppy toddler, to say that, to put up a fight over something so small. Steeling himself, he offered Harry his hand without looking, not wanting to watch the polish flake off.

After a short paused, the bedsprings creaked, he felt Harry shifting beside him. A drawer opened and closed. Louis squeezed his eyes tightly shut - and then Harry folded his fingers around a little round pot. Confused, Louis opened his eyes.

It was a navy blue pot with a pink lid. Louis lifted it up to examine it.

“ _PRETTY QUIK INSTANT NAIL POLISH REMOVER. Simply dip and twist_ ,” he read.

“You can borrow it,” Harry said. “So you can keep them for a bit longer. But before you go out of your room to see anyone or anything, you have to promise me you’ll take it off, okay? Please.”

“I promise,” Louis said, and he curled his pinky finger around Harry’s to prove it.

Later on that evening when he was washing the acidic smell of nail varnish remover off his fingers and watching the last few sequins vanish down the plughole, Louis tightened his grip on the little pot and wondered if Harry would miss it terribly if he didn’t give it back just yet. He just wanted a little bit of a reminder.

~*~

“Something’s wrong,” said Liam.

They all turned to look at him, Perrie almost dropping the Xbox controller. She was halfway through creaming Louis on Fifa, playing on the Xbox that Niall had carted all the way from home after visiting his parents the weekend before, claiming that he couldn’t stand to be parted from it any longer. Since then, they’d all been squabbling over it; Louis, who did not want to be on the receiving end of Jesy’s witchy fingernails again, had given up trying to hog the controller and had only just meekly begun his turn. Already, Perrie was wiping the floor with him - but when the controller slipped, he seized the opportunity to pull a fast one on her and sneak ahead.

“What?” Perrie asked.

“It has been…” Liam checked his phone. “Precisely two weeks since Louis mentioned Harry Styles. Two whole weeks.”

Perrie leaned across to lay a hand across Louis’ forehead. Louis swatted her away.

“It can’t have been that long,” said Jade.

“It is. I’ve kept a tally. Wanted to see how long he could keep it up for. Two whole weeks, without even an allusion to our mysterious neighbour at the end of the hallway. No whining, no pining, no mooning after him. Not even any wild ranting to cover up his raging sex-lust. Not one word.”

“I thought it had gotten quiet around here,” Niall said. “Go on, who paid him?”

“I _would_ have paid him, but it looks like he managed to shut up all on his own. It’s a bloody miracle!”

“You’re all tossers,” Louis snapped. “You moan when I talk about him, you moan when I don’t. There’s no satisfying you people.”

“Did you go to rehab?” asked Leigh-Anne. “Or did you get some kind of aversion therapy? Elastic bands round your wrists to ping every time you say his name?”

“No,” Louis said loftily. “I don’t care about him any more.”

They all gasped. Perrie pretended to faint, collapsing sideways with her tongue lolling out. Liam put a hand theatrically to his chest. Louis glowered at them all.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Louis?”

“Annoyed him to death, by the looks of it,” Louis said. “Unpause the game, will you?”

“No, no, no, I want to know what’s caused this change of heart. Did you catch him doing something disgusting? Picking his nose? Rifling through the bins? Does his breath smell like dog shit?” Perrie demanded.

“Why is it so hard to believe that I’ve just moved on?”

They all gave him dirty looks.

“Louis,” said Niall. “You waited outside his door for half an hour just so he could catch you ignoring him. You bored us all stupid with a blow-by-blow analysis of what he had for breakfast every morning for a week. You tried to drag all the girls to Lush with you so that you had an excuse to pop in while he was working. You were fucking obsessed with the guy, you expect us to believe that you just moved on? Like a _normal_ person?”

“You make me sound like some kind of stalker,” Louis protested.

“Well,” said Jesy, “we did all have bets on when you were going to set up a cork-board covered in blurry snapshots of him waiting at the bus stop.”

“Fuck off,” Louis said.

“What happened?” she whined. “I wanna know. I _need_ to know.”

“He’s been stalking him in secret,” Niall said, sipping from a monster energy can. “He’s acting like he’s reformed, but secretly he’s following Harry around with a long-lens camera, baseball cap pulled over his face. Hiding behind parked cars, going through his rubbish bins to check his receipts. Every night he sneaks into his room to smell his pillows - that’s why he keeps forgetting to bring my fucking weed back.”

“When would I have time to do all that?” Louis demanded. “I’m stuck in lectures all the time, or hanging out with all you tossers.”

“Actually,” Liam said, “come to think of it, I haven’t seen much of you lately, mate. First few weeks of uni you were always crammed into my room, watching movies and getting crumbs all over my Batman comics. You’re always skulking off on your own; these days.”

“Do you have to make me sound so creepy?” Louis put down the controller. “Maybe I’ve just found other people to hang out with. Better people. People who don’t accuse me of turning into something straight out of _Fatal Attraction_.”

“Who are these imaginary people who are better company than we are?” Perrie asked.

“He’s losing it,” Leigh-Anne said sadly. “He’s seeing imaginary people. Lay off the drugs, Louis; they’re making you loopy.”

“You lot would make anyone loopy,” Louis snapped. “No wonder I’d rather hang out with Ha - er - hmm.”

Immediately, he cut himself off. Subtle. He had hoped that his lapse would go unnoticed, horrified at how he had slipped up almost irreparably, but he could already feel his cheeks staining wine red with shame. His temper was getting the better of him, and he’d betrayed Harry already. All he could do was hope that no one would pick up on it. Avoiding all of their gazes, he picked up Niall’s drinks’ can off the floor and took a long pull.

Unfortunately, Perrie was like a bloodhound; he could practically see her ears pricking up.

“Who?” she said.

“What?”

“You said him. Who’s this mysterious him?”

“No one. Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Louis said stupidly.

“Louis has a boyfriend!” Jesy screeched.

“I do not!”

“Who is he? Tell us everything,” said Jade, leaning forwards.

“Is he fit? Is he _lush_? What does he look like; where did you meet him? Deets, Louis, come on.”

“Did you really just say ‘deets’?” Louis said, hoping they hadn’t noticed how he had blanched when she said ‘Lush’.

“Spill,” Perrie said.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about this - can we just play the game?” Louis pleaded.

“Oh, come on, Louis, spill the beans. We won’t tell.”

“Bollocks. Your mouth’s like a revolving door; it never shuts, it just keeps going non-stop and only pauses occasionally when it gets really full,” Louis said. “If I wanted the whole country to know by tomorrow morning, then I’d tell you lot. Otherwise, not a chance.”

They all pouted at him. Already, he could see that they weren’t going to let this go; they would worry at him like terriers gnawing on a chicken bone until they’d cracked him open and he told them everything. Harry would never forgive him.

His head spun like a roundabout, trying to think of a lie. Panicked, he grasped at five different falsehoods and discarded them all as ridiculous. All he could see was the look on Harry’s face when he found out that Louis had broken the pinkie promise and told not only one, but _all_ of his friends about them.

“What’s his name?” Jesy asked.

“Xander,” Louis said, and immediately regretted it. Why couldn’t he have picked a normal name, like Jack, or Tom? Why had his brain regurgitated the stupidest name he could think of, one that he didn’t even know how to spell? Then, he spied upon a way out. What better way to throw them off to scent than to spin a ridiculous lie, keep coming up with nonsense until they smelt a rat, and then make fun of them all for believing him? “Xander Helsby,” he said. “He’s… a bartender. In a gay bar. A gay strip-club.”

“Is that how you met him?” Jesy asked eagerly.

Perrie looked mortally offended. “You went to a gay strip club without me?”

“Well, you’re bi, and it’s a gay men’s strip club,” Louis said. “You could only appreciate half of it, and that half would be batting for the wrong side.”

“Bisexuality is being attracted to two _or more_ genders? Anyway, I don’t need to get off with the sexy gay strippers to appreciate them, do I?” Perrie said huffily.

“I’m very sorry, babes. Next time I go to the gay strip club, I’ll invite all of you, so you can watch me fuck Xander across the bar,” Louis said. “Anyway, I met him on Tinder. You gave me the idea, actually, setting up that fake profile. He’s very nice. Dark hair. Big brown eyes. Nice little body. Looks like he’s stepped straight out of Magic Mike, only he actually has two brain-cells to rub together.”

“And why didn’t you tell us you’d met someone, you traitor?” Jade demanded, slapping him on the arm. “That’s not the kind of gossip you hold back! I told all of you, even when I got off with that manky guy at the bus stop with the dribbly moustache. You know, the snotty one.”

“Yeah, next time, babes, tell us in advance, so we can stop you,” said Jesy.

“Well,” said, Louis, who was beginning to enjoy himself a little bit now, “you see, it’s actually a secret.”

All of a sudden, they all looked rather interested. Liam, who had pointedly plugged his ears with his fingers as soon as Louis started talking about fucking his imaginary boyfriend over the bar, cautiously pulled one finger out. Niall lowered the monster energy can. The girls were all hanging onto his every word, lipsticked mouths hanging open. Louis felt tempted to stick his finger into Perrie’s slack mouth, just to see the look on her face, but he thought that she’d probably bite him, so instead, he just enjoyed the awed expressions on their faces and wondered how much longer he could get away with such outrageous lying.

“You see,” he said, “Xander has this sick grandma. He loves his grandma very much, but she’s very set in her ways and she’s very frail. She has a weak heart. Any big shock could kill her stone dead. Give her a heart attack and finish her off. They have to be very careful not to make any loud noises, or startle her, in case she just fucking dies right there and then. And she thinks Xander is straight and that he’s going to shack up with a nice girl and make her a load of bright-eyed little grandbabies before she pops her clogs. So Xander has to play straight and bring home a fake girlfriend every other weekend so that she doesn’t realize he’s gay. That’s why it has to be a secret, because if word gets out, Xander’s dear old granny will be dead as a dodo. Kaboom.”

Louis had no idea how he managed to keep a straight face during all of this. Their reactions were priceless. Niall had dropped the monster energy can with a plunk, and was doing nothing to stop the fizzling dregs from seeping into Liam’s floorboards. Liam looked mystified, which wasn’t unusual, but he also looked a little like a dog that had was watching a tasty morsel of food being dangled over its nose. Jade and Leigh-Anne looked distraught, whereas Jesy was staring into the distance, clutching her chest, apparently moved by the tragic fate of Louis’ imaginary boyfriend.

Only Perrie looked unconvinced. Her displeased expression, hands on hips, made Louis feel a little bit guilty.

“So how come you’ve not been on about him before, then, if it’s because of his nan that it has to be kept secret? We’ve never met her; we’re not going to tell her that her grandson’s gay.”

“Xander asked me not to breathe a word. He’s very strict about it. He worries a lot.” Louis thought about the near-permanent cleft in Harry’s forehead, the way he chewed at his lower lip and fidgeted whenever they went anywhere in public together. “About his sick grandma,” Louis clarified.

“Never mind the grandma, what’s he like in bed?” Jesy demanded.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Louis.

They all laughed. Affronted, he folded his arms, but they only laughed harder, while he sat and seethed.

“What?” Louis demanded, when there was a slight lull in their giggles.

“Oh, babe,” said Perrie. “You really expect us to believe that?”

They’d believed that he was dating a closeted stripper with a grandmother on the brink of death, but not that he could keep his dick in his pants for more than five minutes? That was the only part of the whole thing that _hadn’t_ been a whopping great lie!

Outraged, Louis said, “What?”

“You’re dating a stripper, who you just threatened to fuck over a bar in front of us, and you’re telling us you haven’t fucked him? Not once? Not even a pinkie up the bum? Come on, Louis. You’re an even bigger slut than Jade.”

“Green doesn’t suit you, you jealous bitch!” shouted Jade, throwing an apple core at her.

“Xander’s sensitive,” Louis said haughtily. “Just because he’s a stripper doesn’t mean he gives it up all willy-nilly. No pun intended. I don’t want him to think I’m using him for his body.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of dating a stripper?”

“That’s vile. Just because he’s hot doesn’t mean I’m going to objectify him.”

“Nah, he’d probably charge you for that,” said Jesy, and they all cackled.

Louis swelled in defence of his imaginary stripper boyfriend, wondered if he was overdoing it, and then imagined Harry in a strip-club, tape over all four of his nipples, cavorting in a pair of tiny tight undies, and imagined them all saying those horrible things about him. Like a balloon, he swelled even more.

“Fuck off,” he said. “No wonder I didn’t want to introduce him to any of you. You disgust me.”

Taken aback by his tone, they blinked at him like a parliament of owls. Even Perrie seemed surprised by his vehemence.

“Sorry, mate,” said Liam, “it was just a joke.”

“Yeah, well,” said Louis, already slightly regretting having bitten their heads off. “I know it seems like a bit of a laugh, dating a stripper, but he’s important to me. He’s nice. I don’t want to blow it, and I want him to know that I have respect for him. Taking the piss out of him for his job behind his back doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a good boyfriend would do. Besides, it pays the bills. He’s got more money than any of us lot.”

“So what’s he like?” Leigh-Anne persisted. “Not like, what he looks like. What is his personality like? What’s his favourite song? What does he smell like?”

“He’s lovely,” Louis said. “A right laugh. He looks all mysterious and solemn and then he’ll say something daft or make a bad pun or trip over his own feet and then he just reveals himself as a massive goofball. He’s unfairly good at Mario Kart and he doesn’t even have to cheat. He takes things a bit too seriously but he’s really kind and romantic, he says the most amazing things without even meaning to… he isn’t judgemental at all, and I kind of thought he was at first. When I first met him…I got him all wrong. He listens to a lot of weird indie music, but he also secretly listens to like, Steps, and S Club 7? And he doesn’t like picking favourites, he has ten favourites of everything. He’s a massive nerd but he hadn’t seen Spiderman before he met me; I had to educate him.”

Liam gave a scandalised gasp.

“He smells like glitter,” Louis said dreamily, and almost said ‘and bath bombs’ before he realized that was probably too specific. Actually all of what he’d just said was rather too close to the truth for comfort, and a lot of it could clearly be applied to Harry if any of them had ever spent even a tenth of the time with him that Louis had. Perhaps he ought to shut up. It was just so nice being able to talk about Harry, finally. Louis was in that annoying honeymoon phase of the relationship where Harry was constantly on his mind, on the tip of his tongue - if his brain had a word count then Harry would be top of the list. Every minute of every day, he thought of him; everything reminded him of Harry, and he lost count of the number of times he’d almost said so without thinking about it. To be in that stage of their relationship, dying to tell everyone how wonderful he was and not being allowed, was torturous. He thought he deserved a bit of slack.

“What’s he studying?” Jade asked.

Shit. Louis had to think of a subject that none of his friends were doing, lest they go scouring their lecture halls looking for a fictional hot stripper named Xander. Perrie was Drama, like him. Niall was doing something to do with Music; Liam was engineering. He thought Jesy and Leigh-Anne were doing English Lit or maybe English Language, but what the balls was Jade doing?

“Geography,” he blurted out, because as far as he was concerned it was the worst subject in existence.

“You’re dating somebody who’s doing Geography?” Perrie asked. “You hate Geography. You said anyone who likes Geography should burn in a satanic bleach-filled pit with off key pub karaoke playing on the loudspeakers overhead, while someone rubs their skin off with sandpaper.”

“Well,” Louis said. “Yes. But nobody’s perfect.”

This, thank God, set off an explosion of bickering about what truly was the worst subject ever, someone unpaused the game and Louis went back to playing virtual football, his heart still hammering embarrassingly from the stress of making up all of those lies. He might need to make notes later to keep track of exactly what he’d said, lest he was caught in the lie.

Louis thought he was safe from their questioning after all that, but when he got up to go for a piss, Perrie grabbed his wrist and pulled him down to whisper in his ear.

“You’ll let us meet him some time, yeah?”

“Maybe,” said Louis.


	9. Chapter 9

Halloween was one of Louis’ favourite times of year.

It had been ever since he was a kid. Trick or treating, he thought, could sometimes be better than Christmas. After all, he loved Autumn, when the air was crisp but not too cold, just with enough of a bite to get you up in the mornings. He liked carving pumpkins, making a god almighty mess and throwing the gloopy innards at people who pissed him off. He liked the way that everything became spooky - cookies with ghosts and zombies on them, flickering lanterns, bats hung at every corner. Every year he’d go down the seasonal aisle at every supermarket in his home town and wander around in awe, fingering the glitter decorations and laughing at the stupid expensive ones; giant zombie dummies taller than he was, sweet bowls with electronic hands that grabbed at you when you tried to grab a treat. He loved tramping around Doncaster in a silly costume, often home made, his teeth gummy with melted chocolate and toffee, marshmallow powder on his lips, swinging a carrier bag full of goodies. Louis had been a friendly kid and he almost always got good sweets, and even when he got shit stuff, like an apple or a box of raisins, he always said thank you very politely. Sometimes, he even got money, although he preferred the sweets.

In later years, he’d held his sisters’ sticky hands and shared out the sweets between them, because his sisters looked even more angelic than he had at their age, wearing ratty princess dresses or tatty sheets with eye holes cut into them. Louis’ costumes were usually superheroes or zombies or the odd vampire every now and then; some years, he’d had two or three costumes, because he couldn’t choose what to be. He knew local kids who had a few costumes, or swapped outfits between them to try and trick the same people into giving them sweets two or three times over, but Louis didn’t do that. He just liked the costumes.

Lying on Harry’s bed, telling him all of this, made Louis weirdly nostalgic. This would be the first year of his life that he wouldn’t be trick or treating with his family - it had just been his mum in the early years, but this year he didn’t even have her. And he was too old to actually go trick or treating; he was pretty sure anyone seeing a twenty year old Louis heading up their driveway dressed as a killer clown would call the police rather than pinch his cheek and give him sweets. Especially because his costumes had only gotten more elaborate and gory over the years.

Louis hadn’t mentioned the party to anyone yet, or even bothered to organise it, but students were good at impromptu parties. He’d scrimped and saved his student loan all month in preparation, and had almost fifty quid squirreled away to buy discounted decorations at the last minute, to put the finishing touches to his costume, and maybe buy a bit of alcohol, although usually people at uni parties had the sense to bring some of their own. Even though it wasn’t even a definite event yet, he was looking forward to it. Booze and Halloween - two of his favourite things in one. The only other thing was to ensure that it was attended by his favourite people. Family aside - Louis was determined that Jay would never see him and his uni friends having a piss-up - there was only one person whom Louis desperately wanted there.

Harry’s head was resting in Louis’ lap, and he had been trying to braid his hair for him. It wasn’t going well; there were odd strands sticking out everywhere and he hadn’t got the braid straight; it was meandering all over Harry’s head like a badly designed road, but Harry seemed content, and his hair was soft between Louis’ fingers. 

“I’m having a Halloween party next week,” Louis said. 

 “Mm?” said Harry.

“Yeah. Fancy dress. Nothing too huge, just drinks and costumes.” An understatement; Louis was determined that this would be the Halloween party to end all halloween parties, but he didn’t want to scare Harry off.

“Sounds nice,” Harry said non-committally. Louis might have been offended if he didn’t know that playing with Harry’s hair made him get like this, all lax and pliant. He was probably struggling not to fall asleep in Louis’ lap.

“Yeah.” Louis licked his lips. “You should come,” he said.

Harry twisted around to look up at him, yanking his hair free of Louis’ gentle fingers and immediately destroying the relaxed atmosphere that Louis had been working to create for a good half hour. “What?”

“Not as a date,” Louis said quickly. “Just. Come. For a couple of drinks. I’d like you to get to know my friends better, even if it’s indirectly. We all live together, after all. I hate to think of you holed up in here when we’re all out there having fun, and it’s not as if - well. It’s not as if you can really study with all of our bollocks going on outside, is it?”

He looked hopefully at Harry. Without even looking, he had felt Harry tense up as soon as he’d mentioned it, and was trying to regret asking him, but he couldn’t seem to feel ashamed for mentioning it. Was it really too much of a stretch to want his boyfriend at his party? Halloween was a big deal for Louis, especially when he was celebrating it without his family for the first time. He wanted Harry there.

“I’d like to,” Harry said slowly.

“I’m sensing a but. And not the fun kind.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s all.”

“You don’t trust me, do you? You think I’ll open my mouth and blabber about us.”

“Yeah,” Harry admitted. “Honestly, I do. I don’t think you’d mean to, and I don’t even think you’d go out and actually tell someone. I just think you’d slip. It’s easily done. God knows I’ve come close before, mentioned you in passing to someone, wanted to tell someone a joke or a story that you’re involved in. We have to be so careful, guarding our tongues constantly. You know how hard it is to mind your mouth when you’re drunk.”

“And what’s to stop me from opening my big gob when you aren’t there?” Louis said, a little bitterly. “Maybe you should come with, just to make sure I don’t fuck things up when you’re not there to keep an eye on me.”

Harry sat up, his hair pulling taut where it was tangled up with Louis’ fingers. Hastily trying to disentangle himself, Louis felt the disintegrating braid fall to pieces in his clumsy hands and fall into loose curls around Harry’s shoulders again. Harry twisted around to look at him, with a stare so intense that it made Louis squirm slightly.

“It’s not about you necessarily. You know how paranoid I am.”

“Yeah,” Louis said flatly. “I do.”

His fingers curled into fists. It was offensive, that Harry still didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut after everything, that he was still looking for an ulterior motive in everything Louis did. For a while he had almost forgotten how much it grated, having a boyfriend who refused to be associated in public with him; lost in the illicitness, the romance of it, their forbidden relationship, had caught him up in a whirlwind for a while. Well now, he was brought rudely back to earth with a bump. The reality of this wasn’t fun or exciting. It sucked.

“Don’t be like that,” Harry said reproachfully, like it was _Louis’_ fault.

Louis didn’t like his tone. “Don’t _you_ be like that. I’m not asking for a fucking promise ring, I just want you at my fucking Halloween party. I miss my family, it’s my first Halloween without them and I feel really shitty about it. I was kind of hoping you’d want to spend it with me. But never mind. That was my mistake, obviously.”

“Louis, it’s too dangerous - ”

“Dangerous? How is it dangerous? People have real issues, Harry. People get killed for being in secret relationships like this, people who actually have to keep it a secret. You and me, we’re just playing at it. What happens if we get caught, you get a slap on the wrist and mummy scolds you for being a naughty boy? Grow up. This is stupid.”

He got up and shoved his shoes on without unfastening the laces, probably getting them on the wrong feet. Harry watched him do it in silence, two bright red patches high on his cheekbones the only indication that he was in any way fazed by the argument.

“No one’s forcing you to go out with me,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, I actually really like you. When you’re not being a massive prick, that is. I was hoping I’d seen the last of Dickhead Harry, but apparently not.”

He was so angry that he actually used the front door, tramping over in his shoes which were falling uncomfortably off his feet, not properly fastened. Harry just stayed cross-legged on the bed, watching him, clearly not giving a shit that he’d upset Louis. Well, fuck him.

“I’ll see you around, Harry,” Louis said, thinking that he probably wouldn’t, because Harry never left his room any more when he was in any danger of having to encounter other people.

He slammed the door on his way out.

~*~

Louis had been worried towards the end that the party stuff wouldn’t be ready in time, but luckily his friends had risen magnificently to the occasion, nabbing a shopping trolley from ASDA to carry half their Halloween department back to the flat. They’d carried it upstairs, huffing and puffing in the absence of a lift, and the trolley now sat forlornly in the corridor outside whilst Louis looked around the kitchen to admire their handiwork.

Together, they’d carved pumpkins; Jade turned out to be a dab hand with a knife, making four pumpkins with proper scary faces, one that looked like Jack Skellington and another that had a poop emoji carved into it, for comedy purposes. They’d forgotten to buy candles, so the girls had raided their rooms and brought out a selection of fancy scented Yankee candles to put in the pumpkins, so that the room was not only bathed in flickering lights, but also smelled of an obscure combination of caramel, apple, vanilla, and burning pumpkin.

‘Streamers’ (toilet paper) had been hung from the ceiling and draped across all the worktops. Jesy said they looked like the bandages from a mummy. Louis privately thought they looked like ripped pieces of toilet paper, which was exactly what they were, but he appreciated the effort. Someone had thrown confetti everywhere, so that people trailed little shiny plastic bats and pumpkins wherever they walked, picked up on their shoes and socks. Niall and Liam had bought some spooky cupcake kits to try and make zombie muffins; half the cakes were burnt and the other half looked like they were covered in sloppy green shit (the icing had gone horribly wrong) but they were definitely scary. Someone had found a literal fishbowl and filled it with alcohol, and his guests were already arriving, dumping bottles of booze on every available surface. Louis took a bottle of champagne off a girl he vaguely recognised from his drama class and uncorked it, sticky foam shooting all over the floor. They all cheered. Louis chugged straight from the bottle. Champagne tasted what he imagined piss would taste like, only more foamy, but he didn’t say so, just handed it back to the girl and jogged over to the kitchen door as Liam walked in.

Someone turned on the music. It was The 1975, one of Harry’s ten favourite bands. That made Louis feel something heavy in his stomach; he and Harry hadn’t spoken since Harry had refused to come to the party. Louis smoothed down his shirt. He’d come as a vampire, used a shit tonne of food colouring to drench a white shirt in blood, along with a suit that had been going cheap in the clothing department at ASDA. He had slicked his hair back and had Perrie outline his eyes and give him hollowed cheeks, bloody lips, and a gruesome bite wound on his jugular. She had done brilliantly, mixing up some jelly and somehow sticking it to his neck with eyelash glue, glazing it over with god knows what to make it stick. Louis suspected that when it came to removing it, he would also end up removing several layers of skin. He wondered what Harry would think of his costume, and the reminded himself that they were fighting and therefore that he didn’t give a shit. The music blared on, arty hipster shit.

“Someone turned this shit off!” he said. “Oi, Liam!”

Liam waved. He was wearing a luminous yellow high-vis jacket, unfastened, showing off his chest and stomach, and a red plastic helmet. Underneath, he wore tight black skinny jeans. Louis looked him up and down, distinctly unimpressed (and reluctantly awed at the sight of his taut stomach).

“And what are you supposed to be?”

“A fireman,” said Liam.

“That isn’t scary!”

“It is if I don’t put out the fire in time,” Liam said.

Well. Louis couldn’t argue with that. But it was his party, and he had decided to implement a ban on non-scary costumes that were just intended to make people want to fuck you - and, well. Flashing your abs all over the place definitely broke Louis’ rules.

“Perrie!” he bellowed.

Perrie popped up in seconds, brandishing an enormous fluffy brush, with a eyeshadow pallet tucked under her arm. She was dressed as a zombie bride, all flouncy gauze, ripped strategically, but she had managed to make one eye look like it was swollen and dripping blood and ooze down one cheek, and her hair was so furiously backcombed that Louis thought it ought to qualify as a costume all on its own.

“Fix…this,” Louis said distastefully.

“What?” asked Liam, backing away with his hands held up as Perrie advanced on him, wielding her brush like a blow-torch.

“It’s the rules, Liam. You’re not scary enough. Either you leave the party, or we fix you.”

“Fix me how?”

“Well, it’s simple. Either you leave as a plain, bog-standard fireman, or you stay as a zombie fireman. Your choice.”

With a great sigh, Liam closed his eyes and allowed Perrie to begin working on him.

She was done remarkably quickly; just a few quick swipes with purples and blues to create a long bruise down his cheek; some liquid liner and a bit of fake blood to give him a scar across his forehead, and then some red eyeshadow and smudged liner around his eyes. Stepping back, Perrie admired her handiwork, licking her thumb to wipe a stray smudge of eyeliner from the corner of his eye.

“Brilliant,” Louis said.

Liam looked down at himself, then squatted down and squinted at his reflection in the oven door, peering past the grease smudges. “I’m a zombie fireman,” he said skeptically.

“Yep.”

“Then shouldn’t I be covered in horrendous burns?”

“I can give you some, if you’d like,” Louis offered, producing a cigarette lighter and flicking it on and off several times.

“Er,” Liam said hastily, “actually, I’m all right, thanks.”

Just then, Niall came into the kitchen with a rustle. He was wearing a plain black blazer, except that it had about fifty sheets of paper stapled to it, all covered in printed writing. Grinning, he spun around in a circle.

“How do I look?”

“What are you supposed to be, a paper recycling plant?”

“Take a closer look,” said Niall, shoving one arm underneath Louis’ nose so that he could read what was written on the paper.

Looking closer, Louis realized that it was some kind of exam paper, covered in questions that Louis could barely read, let alone begin to answer. Bewildered, he scanned the paper, and spotted a large, red ‘F’ in a circle at the bottom.

“I’ve come as failure,” Niall said proudly.

“Jesus,” said Louis. “Way to kill the mood, you miserable prick.”

“Scary enough for you?”

“Yes, you’re fine,” Louis said irritably. “The stuff of nightmares, honestly.”

“I’m here!” bellowed Jesy. “Move over, coming through, the Queen has arrived!”

She marched over to Louis. Jesy was wearing a black mini-skirt, fishnet tights and a white shirt that resembled an elastic band, with ‘STUDENT LOANS’ emblazoned across it in stark black lettering. Niall’s expression suddenly soured.

“Jesus Christ, what are you?”

“I’m the horrific debt we’re all going to be in once this is over,” said Jesy. “Anybody got any wine?”

“We have vodka, tequila, and a few dregs of orange juice,” Louis said, “and I have a new rule: if anybody else comes to my party dressed as an insufferable prick in an arty concept costume, they can fuck off.”

“You stole my idea!” Niall said.

“What, to be a miserable twat? Nah, I just thought of something better than you. Come on, Failure, let’s dance. You’re gonna need the practice.”

“Why?”

“For your stripping career, of course, to pay off your student loans.” Jesy grabbed Niall’s hand and pulled him onto the “dance floor” (the kitchen floor, minus the table; Louis had stowed it in his room for the time being, to make room).

The music blasted, mostly thudding techno shit, and stuff from the charts that Louis either hated or loved, respectively. Someone turned the lights off, so that the whole room was only illuminated by the pumpkin lanterns and the rapidly dwindling light streaming in through the window. Before long he was too drunk to distinguish between the stuff that made him want to dance and the stuff that made him want to puke; he danced to all of it, rocking his hips, grinding against anyone who seemed willing.

He danced with Perrie for four songs straight, throwing her around, twirling around her, her sweaty hair sticking to her face, make-up running. The painted gore around her eye was beginning to melt, smearing across her cheek. Her laughter made his head spin. The air tasted like smoke and sweat; someone had opened a window so that the cigarette fug didn’t set off the smoke alarms and every time they whirled past the window, the snap of fresh air in his lungs was jarring, almost painfully sweet. His head ached a little; his limbs felt fuzzy.

Niall lurched past, dancing with Sarah. She had come dressed as a devil, all red shiny lycra and patent shoes, but with wonderfully malevolent make-up, and she waved at Louis as he danced by. He waved back a little smugly, congratulating himself once again on his matchmaking skills. On the other side of the room, Jesy was laughing uproariously at a stranger’s joke; Leigh-Anne had invited her boyfriend from some other uni and was snogging him in the corner, plastered against him with her dark lipstick smeared across his chin. Louis was breathlessly drunk, the kind of drunk where things were just beginning to feel unreal. His lips felt numb; his hands were heavy. He didn’t care how he looked, sweaty-haired, bleary-eyed. Spinning around, he bumped into Perrie; she staggered away, shrieking with laughter.

Louis picked someone’s drink up off the window-sill; something acid green that tasted like rotten teeth in the making. He downed it. His party, after all. Then, he went to stand by the window, tilting his head back, inhaling the crisp air outside like new beginnings. Outside, the night was like a sheet of velvet sprinkled with glitter, the stars blurring before his eyes. Taking a deep breath, Louis lurched back into the fray.

He found himself dancing with a stranger; a tall guy, dressed in a well-fitting black suit with a white plastic mask that covered half of his face, enough to make the other half unrecognisable, especially when you were as drunk as Louis was. Louis was sure he’d never seen the guy before; his hair was slicked back, and he was wearing black gloves, and he didn’t introduce himself; just pulled Louis in and started to dance with him. It was not particularly skilful dancing; it fluctuated between slutty drunken make-out dancing, and tipsy-dad-at-a-wedding dancing, but Louis didn’t care. At one point, he tripped and fell into the stranger’s arms, and the guy responded with a strangely familiar laugh, but Louis couldn’t place his voice.

Perrie seized him and hauled him away, pressing her lips to his ear. He could feel the stickiness of her lipstick blotted against his earlobe. “Get in there, babe!”

“What?”

“Get in there!” she yelled. “Looks like you’re gonna get some! Who is this guy, anyway?”

“No idea, never seen him before! Maybe Niall invited him.”

“Well, whoever he is, he wants into your sparkly undies, babe!” She seemed to have forgotten about Xander. Or maybe she had just known all along that he wasn’t real.

“Nah,” Louis said. Then, “Really?”

“He’s well into you! Go get ‘em, tiger.” She gave him a playful shove, then grabbed the back of his shirt to haul him back. “Just…be careful, yeah? Might be a bit of a weirdo. I’d be wary of any bloke who gatecrashes a party dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.”

Louis had no intention of actually sleeping with the guy - he had Harry, after all, even if they were fighting. But, he thought, as he moved back in, there was no harm in dancing with him, having a bit of fun. After all, he wasn’t taking it that seriously - he was doing some kind of weird shimmy with a huge grin spread across the visible half of his face - and, well. Louis would dance with anyone who was willing.

The trouble came when the guy grabbed his waist with both hands and pulled Louis back into him, his arse slamming into the guy’s hips. Shocked, Louis tried to pull away.

“Excuse me, mate, I’ve got a boyfriend,” he said, turning around to glare up at him. Manhandled, at his own party! How rude.

“Yeah,” the guy said, with great amusement, “I know.”

“What? What do you mean, you know?” Louis demanded.

“I mean,” the guy said, and he quickly lifted the mask away from his face, “I _know_.”

It was only the shortest glimpse that he caught of Harry’s smirking face, but it shocked Louis so much that he almost fell over. Snapping the mask back into place again, Harry said, “I take it you’re surprised to see me.”

“Fucking hell, Harry,” Louis hissed, drawing him to one side, “you scared the shit out of me! What are you doing?”

“You said come to your party, so I came. I’m in disguise.”

“I can see that! Fuck me, never do that to me again! I thought some random bloke was manhandling me.”

“Seriously?” Harry said delightedly. “You honestly didn’t realize it was me? I thought you were just playing, pretending not to know who I was because you were still mad at me.”

“I’m not that good of an actor,” Louis scoffed. He ignored the second comment; his anger of the past week had suddenly evaporated. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Harry admitted, “then I saw that mask in the window this morning on my way to work, and I thought, fuck it. So here I am.”

“You’re incredible,” Louis said weakly. He seized a drink from a passing girl who was so out of it that she probably wouldn’t have noticed if he’d tipped the entire thing over her head. “Here, have a drink,” he said, thrusting it into Harry’s hand.

Harry hesitated.

“I haven’t poisoned it. _She_ might have,” he admitted, “but if you end up in A&E, I’ll be with you the whole time.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean…what if we get caught?”

“Go on,” said Louis. “You’ve got this far. Live a little.”

Harry took a deep breath, then downed the entire drink in one long gulp. Amazed, Louis watched the liquid vanish down his throat; Harry drew his sleeve across his mouth in a smooth motion and set the drink down on the work-top. Then, he gave an elated grin.

“That felt good,” he said.

“Want another one?”

“Oh, fuck, yes,” Harry said, and he grabbed Louis’ hand and pulled him over to where there was an array of bottles waiting on the sideboard.

They drank from broken plastic cups, slits in the sides causing them to lose half their drinks to the floor, and to their sleeves; after Louis’ cup crunched to splinters in his hand when he squeezed it too hard laughing at one of Harry’s puns, they gave up and drank straight from the bottle. The drink was called apple sourz, and it tasted like an acidic hangover and puke and plastic and maybe a tiny bit like synthetic apple. Before long they both had green tongues and the giggles; Harry had taken off the gloves and dropped them in the sink, and his fingers were sticky with alcohol. They held hands and passed the bottle between them, laughing, and the world danced past without caring, without noticing. For once, Louis was happy to be invisible.

Harry drained the last few dregs from the bottle, burped, and set it down a little more roughly than was necessary. “Oops,” he said, and giggled.

His mask was hanging slightly crooked. Louis reached up to straighten it, and became entranced by the softness of Harry’s skin underneath his fingertips. He just wanted to touch. His hands slid up Harry’s exposed cheek, his fingers sliding into his hair, which was already losing some of the wet look of the gel, springing back into its usual loose disarray. He traced Harry’s cheekbone and pulled him down into a clumsy, numb-lipped kiss.

By the time they broke apart, they were both panting and Harry’s mask was barely covering his face at all. Louis didn’t even bother trying to correct it again.

“You wanna get out of here?” he asked.

“Okay,” Harry said. He looked like in that moment, he would have followed Louis off the edge of a cliff.

“Where do you wanna go?”

Harry took his sticky hand and linked their fingers together.

“Anywhere,” he said.

~*~

They ended up on the top of a hill about a mile away from the main university campus; they staggered up it in the dark, laughing and tripping and not letting go of each other’s hands, even when Harry tripped over his own feet and plunged to the ground, dragging Louis down with him. Giggling, they lay kissing in the mud for a moment, the dampness of the grass seeping through their clothes, until Louis managed to pull Harry back to his feet and up to the top of the hill. Then, he collapsed to the ground again, lying flat on his back up at the stars.

They seemed to have gained magnitude since he had seen them last, out through the kitchen window. Perhaps it was because they were closer now, almost swollen, like silver sparks hanging above them, the moon illuminating the night. All the clouds had been drawn aside, like curtains.

“Incredible,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Harry.

Louis turned his head to look at him, and found that Harry had not been looking at the stars at all. His cheek was pressed against the grass, his eyes on Louis.

Licking his lips, Louis leaned in. Their noses bumped together. Underneath him, the grass was cold, the earth hard like iron. He didn’t care. Reaching out, he took Harry’s hand again. In the seconds that their fingers had been separated, his hand had grown cold again, as if missing Louis’ touch. He rubbed it between two of his own, trying to eke more warmth into him.

“Let’s stay here forever,” said Harry.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s fucking do it. We’ll live here, with the moon.”

“What will we live on?”

“Dewdrops,” Harry said thickly. “And daydreams.”

“And what will we do?”

“Whatever we want.”

Louis took a deep breath, and leaned in again.

Their kisses tasted like the stars.

~*~

They parted with great reluctance at around two in the morning, when Harry was beginning to drift sleepily away in Louis’ arms, his mouth swollen and a muddy streak on his cheek. Louis had to half carry him down the hill - no easy feat; Harry was offensively gangly. He looked like he weighed about as much as ten toothpicks stuck together with blu-tack, but all that height weighed him down - not to mention all the hair gel.

Louis steered him upstairs and literally tucked him into bed fully clothed; he tumbled in and fell asleep in seconds, leaving Louis to kiss him on the cheek, make him a glass of water to await him on the bedside table for when his hangover woke him up, and then leave as silently as he could, still tingling from the alcohol and the feel of Harry’s lips on his.

“Oh, hello, look what the cat dragged in,” said Niall as Louis blundered into the kitchen, collapsing on a squishy red chair that someone had shoved into the corner. “Good night?”

“Fucking best,” said Louis. “Best night of my life. You?”

“Fuck me, you’re easily pleased. Midnight shag from a stranger on the top of a hill and you’re happy as larry. Never had you pegged as a cheap date, Tommo.”

“Fuck off,” said Louis, rubbing his hands together to try and get some of the dirt off them. “How do you know I was up the hill, anyway?”

“You’ve got grass in your hair,” Niall pointed out. “And the only grass within a ten mile radius that isn’t the colour of dog piss is up the hill. Anyway, all the neighbourhood sluts get fucked up the hill. Or so I’ve been told.”

“Then how come you’ve never been up there?” Louis asked grumpily, pulling a few bits of grass out of his hair. “What have you been doing all night, anyway?”

“Living,” Niall said dramatically.

Louis looked him up and down. His costume looked rather the worse for wear; he had only a few bits of torn paper still stapled to his blazer, and now looked like he’d come to the party as a wastepaper basket.

“You get fucked?” he asked critically.

Niall turned pink. “No,” he said huffily.

“Why not?” demanded Louis.

“Maybe it wasn’t the right time! Anyway, Sarah’s asleep in my bed right now. She drools. She’s gonna wake up in a fucking ocean of her own spit. Kind of kills the mood.”

“Lovely,” Louis said. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

Niall shrugged. “Pretty standard really. Leigh puked in the sink. Her boyfriend cleared it up. Seems like an alright bloke. Perrie went off with some girl dressed as a fairy; haven’t seen Jesy or Jade for about an hour. Things got a bit dodgy after that teacher guy turned up.”

Louis sat up slightly. “Teacher? What teacher?”

“I dunno, do I? Politics guy. Wearing tweed. Looked like your kind of bloke, just a bit older. Big nerd glasses. Dunno who invited him, and he wasn’t in costume, but you’d already fucked off by the time he arrived so I just left it.”

“Some teacher turned up to my party? Is one of our lot fucking him?”

“Doubt it. He wouldn’t have turned up like that, bold as brass, would he? Seemed like he was looking for someone, actually. Kept squinting all over the place. I half expected him to get out a little fucking telescope or some shit. Stuck around for half an hour and then disappeared. We kept a close eye out for a bit, but even if he called the cops, he couldn’t have got us done for much; nobody had any drugs, and you can’t arrest us for trashing our own flat, can you? It was a bit weird, to tell you the truth, but then Sarah started getting all wobbly so I had to get her lying down.”

“You happen to catch his name, by any chance?” asked Louis. All of a sudden he had a bad taste in his mouth - not the alcohol, but a flat, dry taste, like he’d swallowed a mouthful of pencil shavings.

Niall wrinkled his nose. “Uh, Rick, I think. Mick?”

“Or Mike?” Louis suggested quietly.

Niall brighted. “Mike! Yeah, that was it. Mike Wilmslow.”

Louis sank very low into his chair and said nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

He didn’t tell Harry. 

How could he? After the night they’d had, the firework kissing on the hill, the sleepy, drunken, sloppy mumbles as they talked long into the night, telling tales to the dark. How Harry had nestled into him, mouth damp on his neck, as though he hadn’t had a care in the world. That warm feeling in his belly, like for once, he had someone who was really a part of him. How could he spoil that? How could he see the look on Harry’s face, watch him withdraw like a snail whose feelers had been touched, curling back in on himself in an instant. Shrinking away where Louis couldn’t touch him.

It would be unbearable.

Ever since the party, Harry had been so much more relaxed. He’d stopped fidgeting as much; his nails were no longer chewed with ragged edges. Admittedly, most of their ‘dates’ were still in his bedroom, but they lasted far longer, and were less likely to end with Harry turfing Louis out via the wardrobe. One day, he managed to persuade Harry to spend an entire day relaxing, without studying once. He bullied Niall into lending him the Xbox and they sat together on Harry’s flowery duvet and played Fifa (Harry was crap; Louis took the piss out of him, poked him, prodded him, and then kissed him all over to apologise.)

There was something so beautifully normal about it - about hunching over a laptop watching Netflix with the curtains closed, reading out dodgy jokes from Facebook, passing their phones between each other to exchange funny videos that they didn’t dare to post on each other’s walls. Harry’s grades were slowly drifting higher, something which Louis allowed himself to feel just a little smug about - the reduction in stress was clearly working - and he smiled all the time, like sunshine. Like little giggly kisses.

Christmas was rapidly approaching and Louis was starting to get excited. Usually, his Christmases were a weird kind of cop out, since his birthday was the night before and that meant that he basically got half his Christmas presents on his birthday, because nobody could afford to buy a load of extra presents. It also meant that his birthday presents were usually Christmas themed; endless novelty snowman gifts, snow-globes, winter-appropriate clothing. There was a reason he liked Halloween better; no one could cheat him out of his fair share of presents.

This Christmas, however, was different because Louis hadn’t seen his family in literal months. It was shameful how long it had been; he didn’t even know how it had happened. All of his friends had seen their families at least once since term began, even Niall, whose family lived in fucking Ireland. And Louis always meant to go down, or even just to call, but instead found himself watching Pixar movies and eating cereal. It had been so long that it felt like he could never go back, like when you are introduced to someone and don’t hear their name and can never address them again. The longer he put off seeing them, the more awkward he felt about actually doing it, and being confronted about being a shitty brother and son. Hence, he procrastinated, which was one of his special skills. And for some reason he was kind of excited about seeing them, even if they were all angry with him. Sitting at home on their lumpy sofa with clean matching socks and a hot meal in front of him that didn’t include baked beans as a key ingredient sounded heavenly.

He was leaving that day, and doing one last sweep of the flat to make sure nobody had left any food in the fridge or cupboards that would spoil. Someone had strung up a few limp strands of tinsel and hung gold stars from the door knobs, and a very bedraggled plastic Christmas tree sat half-decorated in the corner from where Jesy had started doing it and given up. The kitchen table was littered with screwed up tin foil wrappers from mini chocolate Santas. On the whole it was not a very seasonal atmosphere and Louis found himself suddenly heartily sick of the place, and of the mess that someone (not him) would have to make a half-arsed attempt at cleaning before they left. Louis found a bag of potatoes in the cupboard that was already sprouting tentacles and binned it, and considered that his contribution to the process. Then, he went back into his room to get Harry’s Christmas present.

This present was a source of great pride for him; he’d spent weeks deliberating over it, trying to decide what to get. His original plan had been to go into Lush, but there was always a risk of seeing Harry there, or getting him something he didn’t like. The only thing Louis knew about soap was that you used it to wash yourself with, and he didn’t trust himself not to get something that Harry already had ten of, or didn’t like, or was allergic to. Besides which, it seemed a little redundant to buy a Lush product for someone who was a) a Lush connoisseur, and b) could buy it himself for fifty percent off.

Therefore, Louis had gone into Superdrug and explained the situation to the first shop assistant he found, who had helped him pick out a selection of nail varnishes and a little nail art kit full of little sequins and four different kinds of little metal stick for Harry to apply them with. Louis had no idea what colours Harry liked, so he picked colours he thought would look good on him. Suffice to say there were a lot of colours. His personal favourites were called _VIP_ and _Catwalk Queen_ , and if Louis was being perfectly honest with himself they were more his colour than Harry’s. He’d also picked up a set of reindeer antlers from poundland, with jingly bells on them, and a box of Christmas crackers so they could have their own small Christmas before they left. Louis was determined that Harry was going to have a good Christmas, even if it was a week or so before the actual event.

Armed with his Christmas goodies, he climbed through the wardrobes, bells jingling, box of crackers getting rather dented underneath his arm. With a huge grin on his ace, Louis burst through the wardrobe doors.

“HO HO - Huh?”

Harry lay curled up on his bed, facing the wall with his back to the wardrobe. He wore a Christmas jumper that had ridden up slightly at the back so that Louis could see the ridge of his spine, and the pale skin of his back. He didn’t move as Louis stepped forwards, and the closer he got, the more Louis could see that something wasn’t right. Harry had curled in on himself, and his pillow was covered in used tissues, crumpled into balls. His breathing was unsteady - he wasn’t crying, but sounded as though he recently had been. For a moment Louis was almost afraid to approach, caught in the unmistakeable feeling that he had intruded upon something that was not his to see. He dithered for a moment, wondering whether he should quietly walk out and leave again, but then a shudder rippled through Harry’s body and he changed his mind. Carefully putting the boxes and bags on the floor, he walked over to Harry and rested a hand on his shoulder. Harry stiffened slightly, but didn’t throw him off. Louis took this as encouragement and sat down on the bed with a gentle groan of bedsprings.

“What happened?”

Harry ignored him. After a moment of deliberation, Louis kicked his shoes off and lay down, resting his chin on Harry’s shoulder so that their faces were pressed together, and he could feel the wet downiness of Harry’s cheek.

Teetering on the edge of the bed as he was, arse hanging over the side, he said, “Budge up, then.”

With a snuffling noise, Harry shifted up on the bed to let Louis curl up next to him in a steadier position. They lay like that for a while, the only sound being Harry’s stuffy breathing and the steady ticking of the clock on the wall, like a dripping faucet. At first Louis found the rhythm maddening, but after a while of lying there he found that it all blended into the background, washing over him like the backdrop of a photograph. Pressing his face into Harry’s jumper, he inhaled the smell of cinnamon and powdery soap, a smell like washing powder, with a faint undertone of acetone. Once he had found that overpowering, but now it reassured him; he clung to Harry, feeling the shift of his bones underneath the wool, and waited.

“Are you sniffing me?” Harry mumbled.

“You smell like Christmas. You smell like Santa walked into a salon and got his nails done.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know.”

He could feel the tension slowly easing from Harry’s body, a full-body shiver as he finally surrendered to Louis’ embrace and melted into him like someone sliding into a warm bath. Sighing, Harry pressed back against where Louis’ nose was buried in the folds of his jumper. One of Louis’ arms was loosely draped over Harry’s waist, his hand resting limply on the duvet; Harry took it and began to play idly with his fingers.

Loathe to shatter the calm, Louis just let him do it for a while, massaging his fingers, rotating them gently in their sockets, tapping on his nails. His conscience, however, refused to let him enjoy the quiet; it nagged and niggled in the back of his head until he finally gave in to it and said, “So are you going to tell me what happened?”

Harry shrugged.

Poking him gently in the ribs, Louis said, “Hey. I have your Christmas presents in a Tesco bag on the floor, but I can always take them back, you know.”

“Presents?” Harry said, stirring slightly.

“Presents are for people who tell me what’s up with them. Everyone else ends up on the naughty list. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules.”

“I quit my job,” Harry said.

They had been talking only a few decibels above a whisper before, a kind of rumble that befitted the serenity of the room, but Harry spoke too loudly and it surprised them both, the tone almost more than the words did. Frozen, Louis tried to figure out what the fuck Harry had just said, because he was almost certain he’d misunderstood and he’d left it several seconds too long to be able to say ‘what?’ without it being weird. There was a slightly idiotic pause as his brain scrambled for purchase, replaying the sentence over and over in his mind until it sounded like gobbledygook, just a mess of intelligible syllables.

“What?” he said.

Harry, who had presumably been expecting a far less moronic response to that, given the lengthy pause, folded his legs up, knees drawing up towards his chest to make himself smaller than him.

“I quit Lush,” he said.

“You what? _Why_?”

Another jerky shrug from Harry made Louis’ teeth clack painfully together as the movement jerked his head from off Harry’s shoulder. “It’s been a long time coming. Exams start soon, coursework is getting more intense, it’s not like I really needed the money anyway, I have my student loan and my parents will set me up with anything I need, it just makes sense, one less thing to stress about and more time to focus on studying, in ten years Lush won’t even still be on my CV, I won’t even remember it - ”

Louis seized his chin and pulled Harry’s head around so that he had to face him. Sullenly, Harry dropped his gaze so that he was staring at Louis’ collarbones. It must have been an uncomfortable position; he rolled over to face Louis properly but still refused to look at him.

“Harry, we talked about this. You need other things in your life apart from uni, or else you’ll go crackers. Studying all the time is actually counterproductive, you can’t focus for that amount of time.”

“Yeah, well maybe you can’t, but we don’t all have the attention span of a kitten on acid,” Harry snapped.

If anybody else had spoken to him like that, Louis would have bitten their head off, chewed it up and spat it right back at them, but he forced himself to keep his temper in check. Going off at Harry was not going to help - besides which, he did sort of have a point. Louis had recently resurrected his childhood club penguin account and dedicated himself to beating all of his high scores on Mario Kart 7, whilst studiously ignoring the two overdue essays he had only half completed and the one that had been given back to him with more red pen on the page than there were words in the actual essay. It was fine. Probably.

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you; you seem to be trying to cut yourself off from everything that doesn’t make your life a living hell. Your job made you happy, do you know how rare it is to find a job that you actually like, especially at our age? So many people are slaving away in supermarkets or thankless retail jobs, or can’t even manage to get a job at all, and yet you found something you were good at and enjoyed, and you just threw it away?”

“You think I wanted to do it?” Harry demanded. “I loved Lush. I looked forward to my weekends, my shifts there were my favourite part of the week before we got together. I could be _normal_ for six hours.”

“So why the hell did you quit?”

“I couldn’t handle it,” Harry said, closing his eyes. “I couldn’t… you don’t know how I get. My head just fills. Fills and fills with all this _stuff_ and it’s going round and round and it won’t stop and it’s getting louder and it’s in my chest and I can’t breathe and it blots everything else out and I can’t _breathe._ ”

Louis fell silent. He did remember that feeling, like someone grabbing your lungs in one fist, your heart in the other, and wrenching. Almost worse than the event, the feeling building, a tidal wave of panic mounting above your head, ready to drown you, the desperate urge to run from it and the shame of doing so. He also knew that his memories, distant as they were, were little more than an echo of the actual feeling of being in the throes of a panic attack.

“There gets to be a point where it isn’t worth it,” Harry said. “Yeah, I loved my job, but the last few weeks I’ve barely been able to breathe on the bus when I’m on my way there; as soon as I clock in I start worrying about have I done my homework, did I do the reading, should I do it again to make sure it goes in, did I copy up the notes, did I do my homework, did I do the reading, what if I fail the test, when _is_ the next test, I can’t study in work, I’m wasting time. I get in and half the time it goes away, the other half it only gets worse. There’s only so many times you can have a panic attack in the store room before your co-workers start noticing.”

“Were they horrible?” Louis said, immediately resolving to march down to Lush and yell at every single person inside, customer or colleague.

“No,” Harry said, “they were really helpful. My manager tried to call an ambulance the first time, actually. But it’s not fair to drag them all away from their work because I can’t get my shit together, and.” His mouth tightened. “I don’t want their pity.”

“Pity and concern aren’t the same thing. People want to help you.”

“I don’t want any help,” Harry said. “I’ve sorted it. I don’t have to worry about work any more. I know you think I’m weak - ”

“I never said that!”

“It’s better this way. I couldn’t eat on Saturday mornings or sleep on Friday nights. I had to go to the toilet about five times before leaving the house, and twice more before I started my shift. I felt sick all the time. Now I don’t. I’ve fixed it.”

“Those things might have gone away,” Louis said gently.

“They already have.”

The terrible thing was that Louis had seen his point. He himself had spent several miserable months holed up under his duvet, eating ice cream and watching movies that he would never get to be in and reflecting on his grim future as an accountant or possibly a teacher. The second had been an acceptable goal, but as soon as he mentioned it to Jay, she had swelled up like an enormous, motherly balloon, scolded him thoroughly for giving up on his childhood dream, and sent him away with a flea in his ear.

Shortly afterwards, Louis had re-enrolled in college and started forcing himself to go to the local drama club, with his mother under strict orders to drag him by the hair no matter how hard he protested. She had made good on her promise; many times, Louis had hated his past self for giving her the order, but he certainly didn’t regret it now, when he hadn’t had a panic attack in over a year. Harry needed a Jay, Louis mused. Unfortunately his mother was a force unto herself, like a hurricane mixed with a rottweiler mixed with the sternest glare one could ever imagine - but in the best possible way. Louis loved his mother a lot. She was not to be underestimated.

For a moment he thought about channelling his inner Jay, frogmarching Harry back down to Lush and making him demand his job back, but Louis wasn’t sure he could pull it off. Besides which, he wasn’t sure Harry would respond too well to that right now; he was picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of his jumper, and his face was still blotchy. Deciding to play good cop/bad cop, Louis leaned backwards, fumbled on the floor with one hand, hanging to the bed for dear life with the other, and eventually managed to snag the plastic bag. He lifted it into the air, shook it,and then accidentally dropped it straight onto Harry’s face.

“Ow!” said Harry.

“Merry Christmas!”

“You just poked me in the eye!”

“I did it with love. Stop whining and open your present.”

“You’re so bossy,” Harry said, sitting up and beginning to pick at the bag. Louis had tied the handles into a double knot that would probably never come undone again. “And can I just say, I love the effort you put into the wrapping.”

“I’m a student, I used my initiative, and I’ll have you know I paid 5p for that bag. Anyway, I’m not bossy. I’m direct.”

“You’re bossy,” said Harry, and he gave up on trying to unpick the horrendous knot in the bag and just tore a hole into it. Nail varnishes showered down into his lap, clinking together as they landed.

Louis sat eagerly with his legs crossed, watching Harry’s expression, more nervous than he cared to admit about the reception to his gift. It wasn’t even the money that he minded about; the prospect of wasting all the cash he’d spent on nail varnish didn’t bother him. He just wanted Harry to like it. Louis had always been shit at giving gifts; his mother, step-dad and siblings had endured years of wobbly, hand-drawn cards and moulting flowers and ugly bracelets, but he’d really tried hard with this one. There was little enough in Harry’s life to cause him to smile at the moment, and that was Louis’ goal.

Chewing on his lip, he watched Harry’s face as he sifted through the little coloured bottles, shifting them around on his lap. The expression on his face was as though the varnishes were precious stones, a lapful of emeralds and rubies that he touched with reverence. Rapturously laying them out in rows in front of him, his gaze turned downwards, Harry organised them into veritable rainbow of little glass phials, stopping frequently to examine a bottle or hold the colour up to the light, see how it changed when he tilted it different ways. Louis was pleased to see that Harry played particular attention to some of his own personal favourites, the colours he had picked without even being sure that they would suit Harry, but just knowing that he liked them himself. As he watched, he saw Harry’s lips moving, framing the names of the different shades like they were ingredients in a potion, smiling at some of the names. Louis had bought some of them just because the names made him laugh - like “Dark Side of The ‘Shroom” -  or sounded cool - “Nightshade”, “Rose Quartz”, “Cappuccino”. His heart beat a little faster as Harry carefully unscrewed the lid of “Treasure Chest,” Louis’ personal favourite. Then, Harry finally looked up, and the expression on his face took Louis’ breath away.

Of course, Harry was always beautiful, even with a dent of worry between his eyebrows or his lips nibbled to shreds, but there was something about the light catching his eyes in that moment that made Louis feel all soft inside. Without even moving his mouth, Harry was beaming at him, his whole face shining with excitement. Louis couldn’t help but grin back at him, a full, goofy grin that sprawled from cheek to cheek.

He held out his hand almost without thinking about it, and Harry took it without speaking, understanding him implicitly. There was a little bottle of base coat on the bedside cabinet, and he swiped a few strips of clear polish onto each of Louis’ nails before beginning to coat them in gold.

It was only the second time that Harry had done his nails for him, but it felt familiar, like they’d done it dozens of times. The firm warmth of Harry’s grasp, his even breathing, tongue poking slightly out with concentration. As he looked down, his eyelashes cast gentle shadows onto his cheeks. The paint on Louis’ nails gleamed like fairy dust.

“Did I do good?” Louis asked, as Harry daubed paint onto his thumbnail.

“You did great,” Harry said. He paused. “I don’t deserve you, you know.”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe you did something really bad in a past life,” said Louis.

“No, I mean it,” said Harry. “Look at how I just treated you. You’re trying to help me and I just bit your head off and made a horrible comment about your attention span. Time and time again I’ve let you down, left you alone, refused to do simple things with you, and you’re still here. Most people would have given up on me by now. You deserve more than me.”

Louis deliberately kept his expression neutral even as guilt suddenly weighed down the buoyancy in his chest. It felt like he’d swallowed a handful of rocks. To have Harry extolling his virtues in such a way, when he was painfully aware that he still had a secret, had invented a fake boyfriend so he could get around the rule of not talking about their relationship, had told lie after lie, was almost more than he could bear. It took all he had to keep from squirming.

“Ooh, stop it,” he said, “my head won’t be able to fit through the door.”

Harry laughed. “I’ll have the university install you a special door. Like a cat-flap, modified so your inflated ego can fit through the entranceway. They may possibly have to build you a new building, but it’s okay. I’ll still come and visit you. Maybe I’ll insult you a few times so that your ego deflates to a manageable size.”

“I sincerely doubt that would ever happen. I have far too high an opinion of myself.”

With a little amused noise, Harry settled back down to apply a second coat to his nails. Torn between relief and shame, Louis fell silent again to watch him. There was something hypnotic about the smooth glide of the brush, the intensifying of the colour. Harry’s room was always quiet. Sometimes, this grated; Louis couldn’t tolerate silence. In his own room, he played music constantly, tinny-sounding as it leaked through the speakers of his phone; he left windows propped open to hear the rush of traffic outside, had a clock up on the wall that ticked in the background. On occasion he’d been known to sit with his ear pressed against the doors of his wardrobe, listening for Niall’s movements as he bumbled around next door, messed around on his guitar, talked to himself, played his own music. Louis had grown up in a whirlwind of little girls and Saturday morning cartoons, chart music blaring in one ear and 80s hits blaring in the other, someone bawling and someone singing and someone fighting, always noise and action. In comparison, Harry’s room felt like a void, with only the sound of the two of them breathing or shifting on the bed, the occasional cough or sniff. This had bothered him before, made him uncomfortable. Now, he found himself comforted by the notion that the entire world was comprised of just the two of them. Harry’s fingers warm against his skin, the coolness of the polish where some of it had landed on his cuticles. The occasional puff of breath on his cheek. Louis had always been restless, always wanting to crawl out of his own skin, but it appeared that Harry had become his anchor.

“I just want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Harry said. “Even the insults and the fights. All the times you’ve told me exactly what you think, although it pisses me off and doesn’t make sense. For not giving up on me.”

He was suddenly aware of the way Harry was looking at him in a way that he had never done before. There was an intensity in it that Louis was only used to seeing in the eyes of boys who were already inside him, or had him inside of them; a fierceness and desperation he knew only from people who wanted him physically. That wasn’t the impression he got from how Harry was looking at him, though. This was different. He almost wanted to hide from it, but he couldn’t look away, drawn in by the flames in his gaze. Harry’s grip was suddenly tight. It almost frightened Louis, the way Harry looked at him like they really were the only people in the world - more like the whole world could be razed to ash around them and Harry would never stop looking.

“Louis,” Harry said, “I think I - ”

“ _NIALL’S MILKSHAKE BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE YARD, AND THEY’RE LIKE, IT’S BETTER THAN YOURS, DAMN RIGHT, IT’S BETTER THAN YOURS_ \- ”

They both jumped out of their skin; Harry flinched so hard that he dropped the nail polish and spilt half of it on the duvet, and Louis almost fell off the bed altogether, saving himself by grabbing the edge of the bedside cabinet. He knocked all Harry’s stuff onto the floor as he flailed, trying to regain his balance, not helped by the distraction of his phone buzzing furiously in his pocket. It slipped free, hit the floor with a bang that made Louis yelp and thank God he had an android and not an iphone. Louis clawed at the table, which rocked dangerously, managed to right himself, and snatched the phone up off the floor. Niall’s face showed up on his caller ID, grinning wildly with a beer in hand, whilst the phone still screamed “ _NIALL’S MILKSHAKE BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE YARD_ ” in a chorus of drunken voices. The fuckers had changed his ringtone. Louis stabbed frantically at the screen, trying to get rid of it, and then the phone stopped ringing and the new silence was deafening.

Harry sat stunned like a rabbit that had narrowly missed being run over, twitching slightly. The nail polish bottle lay overturned by his knee; in his right hand he still held the applicator, which dripped steadily onto the duvet. Louis hastily picked up the bottle, put it on the cabinet, took the lid out of Harry’s hand and screwed it back on. There was a pile of detritus on the floor - study notes, Harry’s bedside lamp with a newly dented lampshade, and some highlighters. Louis ignored them. Instead, he sat uncomfortably, trying to explain the atrocity that was his new ringtone and coming up blank. After all, it had been just as much of a shock to him as it had been to Harry, if not more so.

“Er,” he said.

The phone started ringing again, and Louis decided he’d better answer it. Making an apologetic face, he picked up, getting up to go and stand on the other side of the rom while he did so. “Hello?”

“WAHEEEEEEEEY!” yelled Niall.

Louis held the phone away from his ear, cringing. “Excuse me?”

“TOMMO!” The phone crackled in protest at Niall’s bellowing. “Where are you? We’re at the pub for a Christmas drink, doing pressies. Where the fuck are you, mate?”

Shit. Louis hadn’t realized they were doing presents. Exchanging presents with friends, he had always found to be a minefield; family and significant others were obvious gift recipients, and also usually forgave you for giving shit presents. Friends were a whole new kettle of fish. The main issue, he found, was knowing who to buy for in the first place, and the resulting misery or resentment if you got it wrong. Many times Louis had been suckered into an endless cycle of getting a gift for someone who hadn’t got him anything, which embarrassed them and offended him; the next year he didn’t get them anything, and they had of course remembered the previous year’s embarrassment and got him a gift to make sure it didn’t happen again. Then, there were shit gifts that you had to pretend to like, or even worse, the shame of getting someone a really cheap present only to find that their gift was thoughtful and expensive. It was one thing Louis hated about Christmas, and he’d been hoping to escape it this year. Besides which, he’d spent most of his money on family or Harry and his bank account was full of mothballs and dust, and maybe a few buttons. He sensed a trip to poundland on the horizon.

“Er,” Louis said. “I’m on my way, mate. Be right there.”

He hung up.

Harry had begun picking at the drying lumps of nail varnish on his duvet, determinedly not looking at Louis.

“Sorry,” Louis said. “They changed my ringtone. Tossers.”

“Mm,” said Harry.

“Bellends, really. They think it’s funny. I mean, it kind of was, but…”

Apparently, Harry didn’t agree; he was still scraping at his duvet, not the first one that had been ruined by a Louis-related incident involving nail polish and a nasty shock. The rasping sound of nails on fabric made Louis shiver. It seemed that the atmosphere in the room had plummeted from the comfortable warmth of the quiet to a silence like the eye of the storm, surrounded on all sides by something about to happen and marinating in the dread of anticipating it.

“Right,” Louis said, shifting from foot to foot, “well I’d better get going, babe, they’re only going to keep pestering me until I get there and it looks like I’ve got six presents to buy and a budget of 8p and a button. I’ll text you, okay? I’m really sorry, have a good Christmas.” Diving in, he laid a kiss onto Harry’s cheek and then bounced towards the exit, itching to be out of the room that suddenly felt far too small.

He already had one foot in the wardrobe when he remembered that they’d been mid-conversation before the interruption. The gold polish hadn’t had time to dry and had smeared messily all over his fingers, sinking into the whorls of his fingerprints, looking like he’d been dabbling in gold dust. Hunched over on the bed, Harry looked very small all of a sudden.

“Oh, yeah, what was that you were saying?”

“Hmm?” Harry said, not looking up. He’d started rubbing the sides of the duvet together, bits of gold flaking off and sticking to his hands.

“You were saying something before.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Just that that colour looks good on you. That’s all.”

Louis softened. “Thanks, babe.”

He vanished into the wardrobe, leaving the door open behind him so that Harry could watch him vanish through the layer of clothes and into the blackness.

If he had turned around for a final look before he departed, he would have seen Harry staring desolately after him, the fabric of the ruined duvet clenched between his fists.

He didn’t look back.

~*~

The gift-giving process was an unmitigated disaster.

A hasty stop off at poundworld had yielded decent results; without a list of people who would be there, Louis wasn’t sure who to buy for, so he bought six gifts for the inner circle and two generic emergency gifts to save any embarrassment. When he got to the pub, things were already in full swing; Niall handed him a beer without saying anything and went back to trying to build a house of cards with the beermats. Louis didn’t like beer, but it was free, he supposed, so he drank some anyway, wincing at the taste. Then, he sat.

They exchanged gifts, then. Louis gave Perrie half of a ‘best friends’ bracelet, which made her squeal with delight. He didn’t tell her that he’d already lost the other half. He gave Jesy a set of false nails, and Leigh-Anne one of Harry’s nail polishes that had never found its way out of his pocket and that he didn’t think Harry would have liked anyway. Liam got some paper plates with Batman on them, because it saved him from doing the washing up. Louis was rather pleased with himself, especially when he presented Niall with an enormous red mug that you could probably have filled with a whole kettle full of water. In fact, he was just inwardly congratulating himself on his gift-buying abilities when Niall turned the mug around and discovered that it said ‘WORLD’S BEST DAD’ on the back.

The others howled with laughter. Louis sulked. Niall, for his part, insisted that all the rest of his drinks were poured into the mug, making it unsurprisingly sticky. More presents were exchanged; Niall got everyone a chocolate Santa, except for Sarah, who got a bag full of Lush products. Perrie bought them each a set of earbuds that Louis thought he had seen in Primark the week before, all with various decorations on them, like little diamantes or plastic ducks. They were cute, but Louis thought trying to actually use them would produce quality on par with trying to listen to music through a shoelace. Jade had made them each a cupcake with runny icing. Jesy and Leigh-Anne clubbed together to buy them all a Christmas drink, which Louis thought was the best present they could possibly have picked. Liam had gone down the traditionally unimaginative route for buying gifts for people you didn’t know that well, and bought them all little boxes of smellies, which Louis thought made his “World’s Best Dad” mug look like a princely gift in comparison.

Sarah got them all a photo keyring, where you had space to put a picture inside it. She got Niall a copy of _Fifty Shades of Grey_.

The girls found this hysterical; Liam scrunched up his nose and giggled. Louis roared with laughter and slapped Sarah on the back, until he looked around for Niall’s reaction and saw the distinctly uncomfortable look on his face. Clutching the book with both hands, Niall looked like he had just been handed a stranger’s snotty baby and was fighting the urge to give it back. He gave Louis a pleading look, which Louis wasn’t sure how to answer. Meanwhile Sarah, looking pleased with herself, awaited his response.

“Thanks, babe,” said Niall.

“I thought it might give you some ideas,” Sarah said, with a distinctly filthy smile.

“Yeah,” said Niall. “Except _Fifty Shades of Grey_ actually perpetuates abuse and gives a truly horrible portrayal of BDSM relationships, so…” He put it gingerly down on the least sticky spot on the table, as though expecting it to leap up and bite him. “I’m sure it’ll be an interesting read, though.”

They all stared at him like he had stood on his head and started singing nursery rhymes in a foreign language. Louis, bewildered by Niall’s sudden desire to protest against the perpetuation of abuse in fiction, felt an utterly gormless look spread across his face but was powerless to stop it.

A cold silence stole across the table, a shadow plunging them all into sudden darkness. Sarah looked incredibly displeased; she appeared to be contemplating whether to take the book back and then throw it at him.

“Your gratitude astounds me,” Sarah said flatly.

“Thank you,” said Niall, clearly meaning the complete opposite. “But it’s not really the sort of thing I’d be into, is it?”

Shifting, Louis opened his mouth and then decided it was in his best interests not to speak. He shrunk down in his seat, picked up his drink and took a sip. Then another. He continued to take frequent sips to try and ignore the tension, inwardly staving off the panic about what he would do when he finished the drink. Similarly uncomfortable, Perrie started fighting with the packaging on her new headphones, noisily trying to free them from the plastic. No one dared to interrupt, lest they get caught in the crossfire of the fight that was rapidly brewing.

“No,” said Sarah, “perhaps you’d have been better off with an anatomy book, that way you might be able to figure out where your dick is - or if you even have one.”

Liam, who had been mimicking Louis’ technique of drinking to avoid having to look at anyone, inhaled half a pint of beer up his nose. Louis, on the other hand, spat it across the table. The girls all shrieked at him and started attacking him with napkins, mopping up the mess on the table, whilst Louis hastily bashed Liam between the shoulder blades to try and keep him from choking. Niall and Sarah did not seem to notice the hubbub; instead, they continued to glower at each other with remarkable ferocity. Louis had to admit, he admired Sarah’s ability to have a furious fight without saying a single word; the lightning flying from her eyes made her opinions clear and was far more cutting than a single verbal remark could have been. Give Niall his due, he was giving as good as he got, with a look that could have killed an entire county. Louis half expected them to leap across the window and start clawing at each other; nervously, he backed away slightly.

“I’m going to get another round,” Niall said, through gritted teeth. “Sarah, do you mind coming to help me with the drinks?”

“With pleasure,” she said icily.

They headed over to the bar together, leaving Louis and the others to sink back down into their chairs with relief. As soon as they reached their destination, Niall and Sarah began to hiss furiously at each other; the bartender, who had gone over to take their order, hastily backed away and started emptying the glass-washer as loudly as possible. The actual words were inaudible over the din, but Louis could practically see the sparks flying and decided that he was very glad not to be a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation. In fact, the bartender, who was almost certainly in earshot, looked like she heartily wished she was anywhere else in the world but there.

“They’re not actually going to get any drinks, are they?” said Liam.

Louis and the girls glanced over at where the two were bickering, just as Sarah made an incredibly rude gesture.

“No,” they all said in unison.

Several minutes later, Niall and Sarah returned to the table, visibly fuming. Neither spoke. Liam, clearly wanting to enquire about the drinks, but not having the nerve, fidgeted. Everyone wanted to move the conversation past the painful awkwardness in the air, but nobody had the guts to do it. Even Louis, who usually specialised in this area, was mute. Resentment poured off Sarah in great waves of hostility that he did not want directed at him in any way, shape, or form.

Finishing the dregs of his drink, he stood up and said, “Right, well, I’m going back to the flat to pack up. Train to catch, and that. Have a nice Christmas!”

He had intended to flee, then, but got stuck trying to stuff all of his gifts into the ratty carrier bag he’d brought with him. As a result, he had to deal with the looks of betrayal from Liam and the girls, who all clearly wished they had said something first. They couldn’t all make their excuses and leave at once; he had trapped them into several more uncomfortable minutes with an angry Sarah. Louis couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about saving his own arse; they’d all been too slow. Floundering with his stuff, he finally managed to pack it all up and was halfway out of the door when Niall, determinedly not looking at his girlfriend, got straight back up again.

“I’m coming, too.”

“Oh,” said Louis. “Okay.”

“Have a nice Christmas, everyone,” Niall said. He did look at Sarah, then but he gave her the sort of look one might give an ugly houseplant; fleeting and blank. “Goodbye.”

Sarah didn’t reply.

When they walked out, Niall left the book on the table.

~*~

Niall was one of his closest friends, but Louis was not used to seeing him angry, and he was disappointed to find that the tension followed them outside and down the street as they headed back to the flat. Silence reigned, heavy and uncomfortable. Louis hated silences, and quickly decided that he would prefer being yelled at to this hideous quiet, where Niall quietly simmered and emanated anger from every pore. Plus, he was nosy.

“Trouble in paradise?” he said cheerfully.

“Don’t,” Niall said darkly.

They carried on walking.

That conversation hadn’t gone as well as Louis hoped. Not to be deterred, he said, “You were kind of rude to her, you know. It’s Christmas. You didn’t need to go off like that; it was funny.”

“Yeah, well,” said Niall. “Maybe if one of you lot gave it to me, I might have laughed. If she’d given it to me a few weeks ago, I still would have laughed. But lately she’s been making constant sly digs about sex, and my masculinity, and virgin jokes. Forget hints, she’s just been making fun of me. I got sick of it.”

Louis stared. “You mean you still haven’t - ”

“No, Louis, we still haven’t,” Niall snapped.

Louis was astounded. On one hand, he was relieved; he’d been mortally offended by the idea that Niall might have finally lost his virginity without giving him a blow-by-blow account of every position, including the weird stuff like getting pubes stuck in your teeth or almost sticking it in the wrong hole. Louis might have been gay, but he would have listened to the gory details out of solidarity - and because he was a nosy bugger. Still, he hadn’t forced the issue lately, figuring that Niall was probably shy about it and hadn’t liked to brag. Maybe it had gone really wrong and he came before he put it in, or couldn’t find the clit, or said someone else’s name in the middle of it. It hadn’t occurred to him that they still hadn’t done it yet. The idea bewildered him.

“She’s getting really impatient,” Niall said. “She really wants it...I guess she has a crazy sex drive or some shit. And I just don’t feel like...I dunno. I don’t want to. Especially not when she’s being like this, humiliating me in front of people. It makes me think she’s not a nice person. We get on well - she’s funny, cute, kicks my arse at FIFA, she tells me exactly what she thinks. I just can’t handle how she’s taking the whole sex issue.”

“Have you told her how you feel about it?”

“Nah,” Niall said. “She’d only take the piss. I keep fobbing her off. Headache, homework, too drunk to get it up, whatever works. It went okay for a while, but now she just gets madder every time I turn her down.”

“You should just tell her,” Louis said. “Lying doesn’t work in these situations.”

“I shouldn’t need an excuse,” Niall said bitterly. “Why is ‘I don’t want to’ not enough? Everyone loves hearing her take the piss out of me, make jokes about my dick, make comments about my virginity, I get badgered constantly about not doing it yet - if I was a girl and she was a guy treating me like this, everyone would be on my side.”

“What’s putting you off just doing it? It’s not that scary. It’s kind of like wanking, but with someone else. You don’t need to actually put your dick in the first time. You can start off slow. And when you do have sex, your tongue and your fingers are your secret weapons. You wanna get in there with those guys before your dick goes anywhere near. Ask her what she likes, don’t just stab blindly around in there. The clit is where it’s at because ninety percent of men will never find the g-spot. Cut your fucking nails. And don’t be disheartened if you don’t make her come the first time, or the first fifty times, because people with dicks never have any idea what to do around a vagina. It’s not even like going from driving a manual to an automatic; it’s like going from driving a manual to driving a fucking rocket-ship with alien controls that you have to operate with your toes, _without looking_.”

At that point, Louis realized that Niall was staring at him and that he had just compared sex to driving a rocket-ship with your feet. He had made the whole process sound mildly terrifying. His goal had been to try and ease Niall’s mind and give him some tips, not traumatise him with bad metaphors.

“Louis,” Niall said, “what the hell do you know about having sex with a woman?”

“I have had sex with a woman!” Louis said defensively.

“When was that?”

“...A long time ago,” he admitted. “And it was bad, and it felt like a sponge, and neither of us came and she got really offended. And then I realized I was gay. But I read a lot of sex advice pages. And Perrie talks a lot about her sex life. Actually, ask Perrie, because she’s done it from both ways. She knows how to give and receive in terms of a vagina. I swear to God it’s not as horrifying as I made it sound. You’ll be fine.” He clapped Niall on the back.

“I’m not scared,” Niall said. He took a deep breath. “I think I might…”

Louis waited.

The sentence got stuck in Niall’s throat and trailed off. He ended up stood with his hands in his pockets, hunched slightly over. Louis waited, the pause between them so pregnant that it was practically going into labour.

Niall forced a smile. “Never mind.”

“Huh?”

“Nah, forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay…” Louis said. “That was fucking weird. Just...stop stressing, okay? It’s Christmas!”

“Yeah,” Niall said. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

~*~

 

_“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”_

The music coming from the cassette player was crackly and full of static, so that the singer sounded like he had a mouth full of Quality Street wrappers. The tape was so old that it was practically worn through, he could see the wallpaper between the balding branches of their plastic Christmas tree, and the house smelt of burnt Christmas pudding. With one toddler on his knee, another sat on his numbing foot, two teenagers on the adjacent sofa bickering over the XBox remote, Louis finally felt like a functional human being again for the first time in weeks.

It was bizarre, how submerging himself in one part of his life could make the other part seem so unreal. Surrounded by kids and worn decorations, Louis did not feel like the guy with the secret weed stash and the even more secret boyfriend. He was a big brother, even - laughably - a role model. His mum was his best friend - Niall, constantly sending him snapchats of his lunch and instagramming pictures with his parents, felt like a stranger to Louis when he wasn’t in the next room. Louis was still relishing the novelty of being able to have a private wank in his own room with the door locked, without having to worry about someone bursting in on him.

Jay came to sit on the sofa beside him, expertly scooping Doris off Louis’ deadening foot and onto her lap. Louis leaned against her, his head resting on her shoulder. Earnest was prodding at a game on Louis’ phone, too young to play it properly but enjoying the cartoon images bouncing across the screen. Smearing smudgy fingerprints across the screen and dribbling down the front of his shirt, he was enjoying himself, at least, so Louis forced himself not to cringe at the sight of toddler dribble and jam coating his screen and just watched in silence. 

A notification appeared across the top of the screen, and his phone buzzed; alarmed, Ernie yelped and instead of dropping it, like most kids would have done, tightened his grip to keep it from escaping. Louis, seeing the name ‘H’ flash up at the beginning of the notification, casually went to rescue the device.

“Hey, mate, mind if I take that for a sec?” 

Ernie grumbled as Louis retrieved the phone from his sticky grasp, but was quickly distracted by gnawing on the buttons of Louis’ shirt. Smiling, Louis opened the message.

**_Miss you :(_ **

Softening, Louis tapped out “ _Miss you too_ ,” sent it, and locked his phone to hide the exchange from prying eyes - or sticky toddler fingers.

The only part of his uni life that didn’t feel like it belonged to someone else was the part that had Harry in it, another life in itself because it was separate to the rest of his time at university, all of his friends and his classes and his parties. These days, Harry was always on his mind, not always at the forefront but there regardless. Lately, most of that had been rooted in worry. Louis couldn’t imagine how Harry’s Christmas would pan out, locked away with his harridan of a mother breathing down his neck, a probably-evil stepfather, and his perfect sister preening at the head of the table, destined to outdo him in everything. Harry would probably be on house arrest for the whole of the holidays. Then again, Louis wasn’t exactly getting an exciting social life this Christmas either.

As if she’d picked that thought right out of his head, Jay said, “You don’t have to stay here, you know. Why don’t you go and see some of your friends? I don’t want you feeling obligated to stay holed up in this menagerie with all of us. You’ve got a life.”

For a moment, Louis wondered if that was a dig; he’d all but forgotten his family at times over the past few weeks, after the initial wash of homesickness. All his best intentions to call or text had fallen flat, as he’d been distracted by one thing or another. Nights out or parties or hangovers or lectures. Other times, he’d just forgotten. But Jay had never been the type to make sly remarks; if she was upset, he’d know about it.

“Nah,” he said. “I’d rather be here.” 

In truth, Louis had already been to see some of his old friends from before university and had found it an uncomfortable experience. Back in high school, and even in sixth form, he’d had about ten close friends he’d expected to be mates with forever - guys he’d known since he was four years old, had bonds with that he’d thought to be unbreakable. It turned out that distance, and not having lessons together five days a week, had broken those bonds with ease. There were maybe two of his mates that he had snapped perfectly back into rhythm with, after months of little to no contact. The rest, he felt so uncomfortable with that he could barely string together two consecutive sentences in conversation with them. They had new boyfriends and new girlfriends. Most of them were in their last year at university or had careers or jobs already that he couldn’t relate to. Responsibility. One of them had a fucking _kid,_ which was too weird to even contemplate, that one of his mates he’d met in primary school and played lego with had a baby. They’d sat in Starbucks and made politely strained conversation and when he’d left, after promising to meet up again later on in the week, Louis had breathed a sigh of relief and resolved never to speak to them again. They’d left each other behind. That was fine. Sort of.

“That’s nice,” Jay said. “We’ve missed you.”

“I missed you guys too,” Louis said, which was only half a lie. It was just that most of the time he’d been too busy to miss them.

She smiled slightly, like she’d read his mind, and refrained from commenting. Louis looked guiltily away, and then his phone pinged as an email came through, allowing him a welcome distraction. Up until that moment, he’d forgotten that they were getting a review email that day about the progress they’d been making so far that year. Louis got up to go and make himself a cup of tea and read the email in private.

While he waited for the attachment to load, stirring sugar aimlessly around in the mug with a whispering sound and the occasional clink of the spoon against the sides, he reflected on how strange it was to be back in his own house. His bed didn’t feel right any more. His youngest siblings barely recognised him; after a week or so of his company they had got used to having him around, but Louis doubted they associated him with the face they were used to seeing on screens through Skype or Facetime. He was just a stranger who tolerated being dribbled on and agreed to play house and push toy fire engines around the carpet, and built wobbly building block houses with them. Even his older sisters didn’t seem completely at ease around him; the twins were wary, being friendly but not climbing all over him like they used to. The older girls had been frosty with him at first, offended by the lack of contact. Louis couldn’t really blame them. For all his talk about family ties, he wasn’t being a great brother. Even now he was hiding in the kitchen to avoid his guilt about all but forgetting them over the past few weeks.

Sighing, he opened the email attachment. His eyes skittered down the screen, and a freezing cold fist grabbed him by the heart and yanked. Choking, Louis stood with one hand fumbling for the worktop behind him, the other hand squeezing the crap out of his phone, which displayed a long list of fail grades that danced in front of his eyes, each one giving him another heart palpitation worse than the first.

He read the comments from his professors. _Lazy. Sloppy. Lacklustre._ Even the glowing praise from his practical classes did little to save the horrendous failings of his written marks. One essay had been declared unfit to mark; he would have to rewrite the whole thing for it to be worth even looking at again. Adrenaline surged through him. Pathetically, he could feel himself starting to panic, shock clawing its way up his throat and fighting to escape, like a terrified animal had got lodged in there. Louis made a weird little noise and then slid down onto the floor, where he sat with the back of his head resting against the kitchen cupboards and the phone in his hand, which lay limply on the floor. Above his head, the kettle bubbled and hissed and he heard the click as it reached boiling point; his mug sat on the worktop with the teabag and two sugars nestled in the bottom, and he had no inclination to finish making the brew. In fact, he was feeling a mountain urge to empty the contents of the kettle over his own head.

He’d done it again. You’d have thought he would have learnt, after the first time, how ugly failure felt, the stinging shame like razor wire. Instead, he’d forgotten it. All those pretty promises he’d made about not fucking up this time, and he’d given himself over to the seductive power of parties and alcohol and fun. _Freshers doesn’t mean anything_ , everyone said. _Your first year doesn’t count._ The scathing words of his lecturers seemed to disagree, suggesting that perhaps he quit, that he wasn’t cut out for this, that he was a failure with a whole long list of Fs to prove it. All the times he’d told Harry to calm down and live a little, thinking himself so clever and superior, like he’d got the balance all right. In actuality, his work and social balance were just as skewed as Harry’s, but in the complete opposite direction.

A weird laugh bubbled up his throat and burst out from between his lips, shocking him so much that he flinched and bashed his head on the cupboard door. A flash of pain bloomed at the back of his skull and put out insidious roots; he could practically feel it already growing into a migraine to end all migraines. The worst part was that he had nobody to blame but himself. In spite of all the promises he’d made himself, that he’d never slid back into the lazy ineptitude that had kept him coasting through high school and sent him to a sputtering halt in college, he’d fucked up yet again. Apparently, it was becoming a habit.

Then, just to put the cherry on the cake, his Mum popped her head around the door and saw him sitting uselessly on the floor feeling like someone had just cracked him across the back of the head with a wok.

“Louis?” she said. “Are you all right?”

Louis gave an incredibly wobbly and unconvincing thumbs up. His thumb looked like an alien thumb, as though it belonged to someone else. He stared at it uncomprehendingly.

“What’s wrong?” Jay demanded, and he could see her gearing up into Mum mode, preparing to get out the thermometer and a set of interrogation techniques that the secret service would have been proud of.

“I’m fine,” Louis said. “Just came over all funny for a second. I just need to sit for a minute.”

Not to be deterred, she marched over and felt his forehead with practiced hands. “You’re all clammy.”

“Just a funny turn,” Louis said, and his voice sounded weird, not like his own voice at all, some stranger’s words drifting unbidden from his lips. “Nothing to worry about.”

She straightened up with her hands on her hips, giving him a disapproving look. Clearly, this wasn’t a good performance he was putting on. Then again, Louis felt like he was extremely high on poor quality weed and probably looked like it.

Jay opened her mouth, and before she could say another word, a yell from the living room distracted her. Head snapping towards the sound, she narrowed her eyes. Howling followed the initial shout, several voices mingling together as the older siblings unsuccessfully attempted to calm the ruckus. The crying was rapidly increasing with a pitch not unlike that of an air raid siren, as either Ernie or Doris prepared to go full throttle into a tantrum.

She gave one helpless look at Louis, who grimaced in an attempt at a smile that went horribly wrong. Then, Jay was off, ready to soothe a scraped knee or return a stolen toy or bang as many heads together as was necessary. Louis closed his eyes and listened to her wiping the floor with his siblings, allowing the sounds of their argument to wash over him. He felt a cold sense of relief, the sensation of coming back down from an adrenaline high after almost being hit by a car or catching yourself just before missing a step on the stairs. As horrible as it was to be confronted with his own inadequacy, Louis didn’t think he could bear to see his mother confronted with it as well. He didn’t want to be a let-down.

Robotically, he re-boiled the kettle and made his tea, then drifted upstairs with it, safe in the knowledge that it was going to go cold on his bedside table. Louis lay down on his bed, which had been made up with a Groovy Chic duvet, since he’d taken all of his own bedspreads to uni with him. It smelt like washing powder and teenage girl, a little bit like sweat and a lot like perfume. For a while, he stared up at the ceiling, which was one of those weird bobbly ones that looked like messy blobs of paint. His eyes followed the spiderweb cracks up there. He felt like microwaved shit, quite frankly. Downstairs, his siblings banged doors and yelled and Louis drifted, wishing heartily that he could take a nap and escape from all of this for a while but knowing that the weight in his stomach would not allow it.

He didn’t even realize that he’d dialled a number until the dial tone was ringing out against his ear, two steady rings, then a gap, then two more as the phone reached out. Then a click as the call connected, and Louis had suddenly forgotten how to speak, staring numbly at the ceiling.

“Hello?”

He felt ashamed, wanted to hang up, and couldn’t summon the willpower. 

“Hello? Louis?”

  
It seemed to take an age for the word to form on his lips and even longer for it to leave his mouth, and it still came out cracked and strange-sounding.

“Hi.”

“Hey. You sound weird. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sorry, it’s a bad connection. How are you doing?”

“Fine, thanks. Mum’s feeding me up, she reckons I’ve been eating beans and instant noodles for three months and that I’m deficient in about eight different vitamins. We’ve made more mince pies than any one family could possibly eat and written forty Christmas cards to relatives I didn’t even know I had.”

“And there was me thinking you were languishing away in your tower with nothing but your textbooks for company,” Louis said, slightly comforted by the visual of Harry with flour on his nose and an apron on, surrounded by friendly baking smells. Even so, he found it a little weird to think of - Harry, relaxed, Harry, surrounded by the family whose impossibly high standards led him to work himself into the dirt. Perhaps Louis ought to borrow them; an evil mother breathing down his neck might have stopped him from failing so spectacularly that term.

“Sorry to disappoint, but there hasn’t been any languishing, and so far today there haven’t even been any textbooks,” Harry said cheerily. “Now are you going to tell me what’s really wrong or am I going to have to come down there and smother you with my oven gloves?”

Louis fell silent. There was little hope for his acting career if he couldn’t even convince someone of his mental stability over the phone. Unsurprisingly, this thought made him feel ten times worse and he gained a sudden sense of crushing nausea in addition to the misery that had been weighing upon him since he opened that damn email. 

“I’m getting the gloves out right now,” Harry warned. “They’re incredibly grotty and smell like burnt cake.”

“Did you get an email off the university?” Louis asked.

He could practically feel Harry’s frown through the phone. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No.”

There was a thoughtful pause. “I did, yeah,” Harry said slowly. “I did pretty all right. There was one module that was a bit dodgy, but I think if I do okay on the rest this year then it shouldn’t make too much of a difference. There’s a couple of essays I’d like to re-submit if they’ll let me. Did you get yours?”

Louis waited.

The proverbial penny dropped with a clunk and rolled straight down into the gutter, vanishing down the drain. He imagined the look on Harry’s face as he realized what Louis was getting at and felt another hot rush of shame at having to confide his failure in someone, even worse that he hadn’t needed to explicitly explain what had happened and therefore that some part of Harry must have expected it of him. Closing his eyes, he lifted his head slightly so that he could bang it against the pillow. He misjudged the movement slightly and hit his head against the headboard. Good.

“I take it things didn’t go so well.”

“You could say that,” Louis agreed. “You could also say that I’m a colossal fuck-up who never gets anything right. I’ve been a smug twat all year about your work ethic, acting like I’m so superior for pissing my life away and never doing any work, and now I’ve ruined it and I’m going to get kicked out and live the rest of my life as a refuse collector or a lollipop man. All you lot will be rich and drive sports cars and play actual golf, and I’ll be living in a one-bed flat with a cupboard full of instant noodles and no one will ever want to live with me and all I’ll have to show for my entire life will be a pile student debt I’ll never pay because of my crap job, and a collection of Marvel DVDs.”

“Stop it,” Harry said sharply.

“None of my friends are ever going to have anything to do with me; Perrie’s going to become a famous actor and Niall will be a music producer and Liam will be building cool planes and shit and then they’ll have a school reunion in forty years and forget to invite me. Or they’ll invite me and I’ll have to say no because I can’t afford the bus fare to get me there - ”

“Louis!”

“And you’ll be a big-shot lawyer and never mention me and you’ll probably have a contingent of lovers who wear tuxedos and carry a briefcase, and every now and then at parties you’ll reminisce about the deadbeat boyfriend you had at uni who made fun of you for working hard and then fucked up his entire life because he couldn’t do the same and - ”

“Louis, for the love of God, shut up!”

Louis closed his mouth with an abrupt snap of teeth, a little stunned by the sudden silence. He hadn’t quite realized that his mouth had been running away with him so badly and suddenly felt embarrassed about it, like his breakdown was an accidental fart that he had expected to be silent and realized only too late that it wasn’t. Feeling an intense desire to hang up, throw the phone out of the window and move to another country, he compensated by crawling underneath the duvet, pulling the pillows over his head, and waiting until the air became hot and stuffy and he was breathing in his own recycled air again.

“What did you get?” Harry asked gently.

“Fs across the board,” Louis said. “A couple of As in the practicals.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “And how does it feel?”

Sorely tempted to snap ‘how do you think it feels?’, Louis nevertheless kept his mouth shut. One thing he had learnt about Harry over the past few weeks was that he didn’t ask stupid questions. He thought about things very hard before he said them. Unlike Louis, who went blundering into sensitive situations with sarcasm and downright facetiousness, Harry was sensitive, and didn’t deserve to have his head bitten off. So Louis tried for a few moments to wrestle this sick, disgusted feeling into terms he could make clear, rather than just a general sensation of awfulness.

“It feels shit,” he said. “Like...it’s not just like something bad happened. It’s not like I tried really hard and failed anyway, because I didn’t; I messed around and procrastinated and put things off. I got the essays back with bad marks and then I just shoved them back in a folder and forgot about them. If I’d pulled my finger out of my arse, I could have fixed it within the first few weeks, but I just buried my head in the sand and pretended it wasn’t happening… even Niall told me to try doing some work. It’s all my fault, and that makes it worse, because I can’t blame anybody else. It’s all on me, and it’s not even like it’s the first time, I knew it was going to happen, I did it _again_ \- ”

Sensing danger - Louis’ urge to start bashing his head against the door must have been palpable even through the phone, Harry said, “Okay, right. So what are you going to do about it?”

“What?”

“Well,” Harry said sensibly, “it’s December. Uni breaks up around May some time. So you’ve been in uni for four months, and you now have five months in which to turn it around. The choice is yours; you can wallow in it and moan about how stupid you’ve been and how you’ve fucked everything up, or you can do something about it. You should be able to redo at least some of those assessments, if you go to your tutors and grovel. The others will be pulled up by your practical grades. And next time you get an essay, actually put some effort into it! It’s hard, and it sucks, but it doesn’t suck more than this. I get all my motivation from remembering this feeling at the end of my A-Levels. You’re going to have to do more work now, because you’re behind. But if you really mean it about hating yourself for letting things get this bad, then don’t do it again. That’s the only advice I can give you.”

For a while, Louis lay there, thinking about it. His plans for what to do next hadn’t actually gone any further than vague thoughts about locking himself in his room and never speaking to anyone again. Now that Harry had said it, his idea seemed eminently more sensible. A part of Louis already shrank from the prospect of redoing four months’ worth of essays - but, as Harry had said, it was better than the prospect of emptying bins at 6am for the rest of his life. Strangely, he already felt better. It was not only having a plan of action, he thought, but of having someone to talk to who wouldn’t just get the vodka out or call him a stupid bastard, or say “I told you so.” It was Harry. Even without being there, he was holding Louis’ hand in a way. It made him feel soft inside.

“I’ll help you,” Harry said. “I don’t know anything about drama but I’m good at essay structures. If you can bring me your notes, I might be able to help you out.”

Louis’ notes mostly consisted of stick men doodles, games of noughts and crosses or hangman when he could convince Perrie to play along, or stains in the shape of large rings where he’d put his tea down on top of them, blurring the few notes he’d made out of recognition. He might have to borrow Perrie’s notes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Any time,” Harry said warmly.

Louis opened his mouth, about to say something else, but before he could get any words out - or even figure out what he was going to say - someone started bawling at the bottom of the stairs.

“LOUIS! GET DOWN HERE, WE NEED YOU TO FIX THE PS4!”

“Shit,” Louis said, “I have to go. One of my siblings has butchered the PS4. It probably has egg on toast in the disk slot or lego in the scart socket or paint on the controller or something - I’ll text you, okay?”

“Louis, wait,” Harry said, “I have to tell you something.”

“LOUIS, ERNIE IS CHEWING ON THE CONNECTOR CABLE!”

“I’m sorry, babe, my little brother is about send himself to an electrical grave - gotta go!”

“I - ” Harry said, and then Louis hung up on him.

~*~

Back in his childhood bedroom, Harry stared at the screen of his phone, which displayed a picture of Louis’ beaming face with ‘call ended’ flashing just beneath. Seconds later, the screen went black.

Harry closed his eyes, squeezed the phone very tightly and whispered, “Fuck.”

“Harry!” His mum yelled from downstairs. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” he called back, voice cracking ever so slightly. He hoped she didn’t notice. “Just doing some coursework.”

After a moment’s deliberation, staring at the blank screen like he could summon Louis back onto the other end of the line through sheer force of will, Harry took a very deep breath. Unlocking the phone, he switched it off, shoved it under his pillow, and buried the pillow underneath a pile of decorative cushions with inspirational quotes on them. Even with all of these obstacles in the way, he could feel the phone drawing him back to it, a persistent itch that told him to call back, even if he just got an answer machine in response, just so that he could finally say what the fuck he’d been trying to say for what felt like weeks now.

It had occurred to him once or twice that Louis knew what was coming and was trying to avoid it - but no. He wouldn’t lead Harry on like that. Louis was almost painfully straightforward, like a Roman road, but with no walls on either side so that his thoughts and feelings could come hurtling at you from any direction. He was just...oblivious. It was almost funny, really.

Except that it kind of wasn’t.

Sighing, Harry turned away from where he’d shoved the phone and went to sit at his desk. Uncapping a bright yellow highlighter and picking up a biro, he underlined a subheading on the piece of paper he’d left there, and went back to his essay.


	11. Chapter 11

Returning to university felt strange to Louis. On one hand, he was sad to be leaving his family; he’d got used to the sound of constant bickering and yelling children, to people leaving foundation brushes and eyeshadow pallets on the sink and using up all the hot water. Even more so, he’d got used to having his clothes washed properly so that they didn’t shrink or turn a weird colour, and having things ironed, and eating what he considered to be real food. On the other hand, he didn’t quite fit in there any more; it was like trying to wear an old shoe that had been broken in until it was perfectly comfy, except maybe it pinched at the toe or had a tiny hole in the sole so that it didn’t sit right on his foot. It ought to have been perfect, but it wasn’t quite.  

He’d almost started to feel like he fit back in there, his siblings warming up to him and Jay finding him a duvet that didn’t have princesses or unicorns on it - but his new resolve to actually get some work done drove a wedge back between them in the end. Being at home had the advantage that he had no friends banging on his door to distract him, so he had more time to do his work and less to pull him away; he’d already fought his way through rewrites of two different essays since the fated email had come through. Unfortunately, Louis’ house was loud. There were always kids arguing and kids bellowing and kids playing games and kids bashing each other over the head with their new Christmas presents; kids hogging the bathroom and leaving foundation on the towels; kids running out all the hot water; kids waking him up every day with riotous screaming so that a lie-in became a distant dream. When they were all out, he managed to get something done, but they weren’t all out very often, and when they weren’t, Louis had to contend with boppy chart music blasting from his sisters’ rooms next door, or the TV buzzing downstairs, or someone banging on his door pestering him to come and play Uno or Monopoly or Dominoes. He could probably have written five essays if they’d all buggered off for five minutes, but he felt bad turning them away. It was easier to do that from forty miles away.

Hence, he was stood back in the kitchen at university on New Year's Eve, guiltily relishing the sense of relief that came with escaping from them once again. 

There had been cleaners sent in while all the students were away, so that apart from things that couldn’t be fixed with a hoover, some Vanish Oxi-Action and a bit of elbow grease - the dent Niall had left in the wall when he threw a hairbrush at it; a few chipped tiles; the crack down the front of the tumble dryer from when Louis sat on it one time - the flat looked like new. There were no smells. The window had been open when he got in, so that the perpetual stuffy smell had vanished, leaving a pinching cold to seep through the room. Louis shut the window immediately and went to make himself some toast. As much as he liked cleanliness, he liked a place to feel lived in, and currently the kitchen had the battered, yet clinical feel of a low-budget hospital. Louis ate the toast without a plate, scattering a few crumbs on the worktop and floor, and burnt it slightly to give the place a homely aroma. He narrowly missed setting off the fire alarm. Then, he went back to his room.

For twenty minutes, he diligently worked on another rewrite of one of his more boring assignments, four textbooks open on the desk and greasy fingerprints on the keyboard of his laptop. He looked out of the window frequently. An undercurrent of discomfort kept him from concentrating fully. Despite how he had longed for peace at home, this was not quite what he’d had in mind.

The whole place was deserted - so deserted that he could hear an aggravating dripping from the sink in his bathroom where the tap evidently had a dodgy washer. Occasionally he heard traffic roaring down the road, but for the most part things were unnervingly quiet. He attempted to rectify this, but Jade had taken the speakers home with her and the tinny sound of music leaking from his phone’s speakers was even more unsettling than the lack of noise. Louis tried listening to music with headphones in, but it didn’t help much. All he could focus on was that apparently, he was the only person in the building, suffering in the itchy silence. It got under his skin until all he could focus on was pacing up and down as loudly as he could, trying to make some kind of noise to shatter the illusion. Clapping. Whistling, which sounded so eerie that he stopped at once. Singing, but again, that sounded creepy in the quiet.

Eventually, he succumbed to the urge he’d been feeling ever since he arrived, and logged onto Facebook. Dismissing the notifications - Niall had tagged him in several un-funny memes that had done the rounds on the rest of the internet months ago, and a couple of ‘relatable’ posts, which were mostly just pictures of minions with annoying captions plastered across them - Louis set up a new event.

**NEW YEAR’S PARTAYYY!!**

**December 31st at 7.00**

**Flat 224b**

**COME PAR-TAY AT THE TOMMO RESIDENCE! ALL WELCOME. BRING YOUR OWN BOOZE.**

He posted it, and then checked his watch. It was quarter to six. 

_ Let the fun begin,  _ he thought.

 

~*~

The turn-out to his party was not quite as Louis had expected. 

For a start, several of his actual flatmates had turned up; Perrie and Niall were still with their families, Jade was abroad, and Jesy was completely MIA, but Liam and Leigh-Anne surprised Louis by materialising in the kitchen just as he was attempting to string up the old Halloween decorations he’d shoved under his bed. He’d tried to make all the bats and pumpkins more festive by cutting out little Santa hats to put on their heads, and the music issue had been solved by painstakingly hooking up his laptop to the TV in the kitchen and turning the volume up to full blast. Nevertheless, until Liam and Leigh appeared, he’d still felt too small in his own skin. He greeted them with a hug and a yell of delight.

As time went on, more people slowly leaked into the flat. Some of them were students who commuted instead of living on campus, and had evidently decided anything was better than being stuck in at New Year with Mum and Auntie Mabel glugging the vino and crackly Christmas songs playing in the background. A few were clearly students of a different sort - college, maybe even high school; mostly girls, stood around giggling in little clumps, who had ignored Louis’ instructions to bring their own drinks and were mooching off everyone else’s. They probably couldn’t get served anyway. Louis contemplated kicking them out, but he  _ had  _ said everyone was welcome. He had a similar dilemma with the partygoers who were evidently  _ not  _ students - a group of tipsy middle-aged women who fluttered and giggled whenever Louis walked past; a creepy guy who Louis  _ did _ turf out when he caught him ogling the younger girls. The kitchen became a mass of strangers and Louis quickly realized that this was not the effect he had intended. If anything, these people only amplified his loneliness, like he’d surrounded himself with paper dolls. 

He ended up sat around the table with Leigh, Liam, and one of the younger girls, all playing Never Have I Ever. It had been an ill-advised choice to let the girl play, for a number of reasons but mainly that he suspected she would be a complete lightweight and also because she was becoming steadily more embarrassed when she couldn’t drink to anything. So far she’d only drunk to one thing - “never have I ever had sex in a car” - but Louis suspected she was lying about that, because the first question was “never have I ever had sex” and she hadn’t drunk to that one either. Still, that was her business.

“All right, all right,” said Louis, banging on the table. “This is a good one, I’ve got a good one.” He paused theatrically. “Never have I ever  _ had a one night stand. _ ”

The younger girl flushed violently and looked down at the table. Leigh drank, downing the whole glass in one, and poured herself another one. Liam looked critically at Louis.

“Are you drinking once for every shag, or just once as an umbrella term?”

“Mate,” Louis said, “if I drank once for every one night stand I’ve had, I’d end up in the hospital.” He took a sip of his drink. There was a ball of heat in his chest, but an unpleasant one, like he’d swallowed a lit match. 

“Then it’s a good thing I’ve got the ambulance on speed dial,” said a familiar voice, coloured with amusement. “Mind if I cut in?”

Louis inhaled his entire drink and had to be patted timidly on the back by the younger girl, who touched him like she was afraid he might explode if she patted too hard. Spluttering, Louis looked up.

Harry was stood by the table, smiling at him. He wore a black shirt with shiny gold butterflies on it, unbuttoned most of the way down. He had painted his nails with ‘Treasure Chest’. His hair waved down to his shoulders. As Louis gawped at him, Harry gave him the sneakiest of winks, just a quick flutter of one eyelid, and that hit him like an electric shock and knocked the sense back into him.

“Sure, mate, everyone’s welcome,” he said, and pulled up a chair. “Have you ever played?”

“I am a Never Have I Ever  _ veteran _ ,” Harry said solemnly.

Just then, Louis realized that Leigh and Liam were staring at Harry as though he had just taken all his clothes off, stood on his head and started singing the national anthem. Perhaps he ought to have feigned more surprise. To him, it was astonishing enough that Harry had come to the party at all, that he’d come home this early. But, he reminded himself, his friends barely ever saw Harry at all, and still thought he was some kind of crotchety hermit who believed fun to be a heinous crime. Liam in particular was doing an excellent impersonation of a basking shark. Louis kicked him under the table.

“Close your mouth, you’ll start catching flies.”

“Uh,” said Liam.

“Right,” Louis said briskly, “since Liam has apparently lost a large percentage of higher brain functions, I’m going to kick-start this next round with a whopper.  _ Never have I ever had to go to A&E to have a foreign object removed from my anal cavity. _ ” He drank.

Liam immediately choked on his own spit. The poor underage girl looked mortified, shrinking down into her chair. Harry laughed uproariously.

“Now that sounds like a story worth telling.”

“Oh, it’s spectacular,” Louis said. “It involves a toothbrush, four very angry doctors and an embarrassing conversation with my mother. It’s an epic. You need at least four days and two bottles of vodka to tell it properly.”

“You’re my hero,” said Harry.

Louis beamed and then caught Liam eyeing him suspiciously. Hastily, he pushed the bottle across the table.

“All right, all right, who’s next?”

The game progressed in a similar fashion, with everyone else taking it seriously, and Louis saying the most outrageous things he could think of to make people (Harry) laugh, cuddling up to everyone (Harry) and flirting (with Harry.) Some time after the third round, the younger girl slumped forwards against the table and stopped even pretending to play. Unsure as to whether she was drunk or had just fainted with horror at Louis’ sex confessions, they tested her pulse, and ended up turning her head to the side so that she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit. Liam draped his jacket around her shoulders. They continued to play.

After Harry’s arrival, Louis felt ten times better, as though just one Harry had made up for an entire building full of people. More people were coming in for the party, but Louis barely noticed them. He was too busy laughing at Harry’s terrible jokes, slapping at his hands when he reached for the bottle, teasing him, poking him. He was starting to get well and truly pissed, everything fuzzy and dark around the edges.

Liam pulled him away from the table with the excuse that they needed to go and get more drinks. They stood by the sink, rooting through the cupboard, where they all kept communal booze for use by the whole flat - the only rule was whoever finished the bottle had to replace the bottle - and Liam grabbed Louis’ arm and hissed, “What are you doing?”

Louis blinked. “Getting more drinks?”

“Louis. You have a boyfriend.”

“Yes,” Louis agreed.

“I thought you said you weren’t interested in him any more.”

“Wait. Who are we talking about?”

“Harry, obviously.”

“Oh,  _ him _ ,” Louis said, flapping his hand. “What about him?”

“If you two were flirting any harder you’d already have bent him over the table. What about Xander?”

“Liam. I am not interested in Harry. I’m trying to be friendly. We all know he’s a moody git, I’m trying to make him feel welcome.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “By throwing yourself at him?”

“What exactly are you insinuating? Anyway, you know what I’m like. I’d flirt with a brick wall, me.”

“Brick walls don’t flirt back,” Liam said disapprovingly.

“He’s not flirting,” Louis scoffed.

He glanced across the room at Harry, who was drinking from a half-empty glass of clear liquid and giving him a very blatant bedroom gaze over the top of it. As their eyes met, Harry lowered the glass and smirked. Leigh-Anne, who was trying to make strained conversation with him, swivelled around in her chair to raise her eyebrows at Louis.

Louis looked at Liam, who looked pointedly back at him.

“That - well,” Louis said. “Look, I can’t help being gorgeous.”

“You can help leading him on, though.”

“Oh, shut up, Liam,” Louis said crossly. “I’m not leading anybody on. I’m having a bit of fun, that’s all.”

Liam didn’t say anything else, but he was clearly unconvinced. Louis led the way back to the table, dodging round strangers, the cogs of his brain moving sluggishly, clogged up with drink, to come up with a good recovery strategy. 

In the end, he settled for flirting with everyone to try and make it less obvious that he and Harry were all over each other. He cuddled up to Liam and rested his head on Leigh-Anne’s shoulder. He handed out compliments like they were burning holes in his lips and he had to get rid of them; he was unnecessarily touchy, pulling both of his friends closer to him whilst he and Harry played clumsy footsies under the table. One time, Louis accidentally slipped and kicked Liam’s shin; he apologised by turning and giving Liam a very sloppy kiss on the cheek.

Liam promptly turned pink and muttered something intelligible. Meanwhile Harry, who had been valiantly trying to recapture Louis’ attentions solely for himself, looked like he’d been slapped. It occurred to Louis that he had not notified Harry of his plan to flirt with everyone to make their fondness for one another less obvious, and that to Harry it just looked like Louis was disregarding their relationship and putting his hands all over everyone in sight. Uncertainly, he looked at Harry, who was rapidly transitioning from hurt to pissed - and not just in the drunken sense.

“Louis, can I have a word?” He glanced meaningfully at the kitchen door.

Louis got up. So did Liam, who suddenly had hold of his wrist. Louis looked down at the manacle of fingers around his wrist and felt a sudden throb of outrage. What was Liam, his dad? He yanked his arm free, which hurt a little more than he was expecting to; Liam had been holding on quite hard.

“Louis,” warned Liam.

“What, am I not allowed to talk to a guy now? Calm your tits.”

“Louis, you can’t go now, it’s half eleven, you’re going to miss the countdown,” Leigh-Anne whined, tugging on his shirt.

“He only wants one word,” Louis said, gently removing the shirt from her grip. “That won’t take half an hour, not even if I say it  _ really slowly _ .”

Collapsing into giggles, Leigh-Anne wobbled and fell against Liam, who struggled to prop her up as she lolled giddly against him. In the disturbance, Louis found it easy to slip free and lead Harry out into the corridor.

The silence out there was shocking, a cool breeze caressing his cheeks. Breathing slowly out, Louis looked at the corridor, which was rocking and churning slightly beneath his feet. Then, he looked at Harry, who was blurry around the edges but still beautiful. Giddily, Louis tripped forwards and kissed him; Harry bore it for a moment before breaking away.

“What was that?”

“A kiss?”

“Yeah, too right. Are you so drunk you missed my face and got Liam’s instead?”

“Babe, I know it was a shitty thing to do, but he was onto us, and I didn’t think it was a good time to tell him that I’ve been lying to him and carrying on with you behind all my mates’ backs. Plus he was starting to think I was cheating on Xander - ”

“Who the fuck is Xander?”

“God,” Louis said. He was too drunk for this shit. “Xander is the fake boyfriend I made up to stop them asking questions about why I’m single and always going off on my own. I told them he was a stripper and he’s studying geography.”

“You would never date someone who studied geography. You think geography is a cardinal sin.”

“Too right,” Louis said, lurching forwards and trying to kiss him again.

He knew it was probably an inappropriate time - not to mention risky, when any second Liam could have disentangled himself from Leigh-Anne to come and make sure they weren’t doing exactly what they were doing - to be making out in a deserted corridor on New Year’s Eve, but drunk Louis didn’t particularly give a shit. Harry’s kisses were slightly frantic; his hands were cold where they slid up the back of Louis’ shirt. Louis twisted greedy fingers into his hair and pulled him down to get a better angle, licking into his mouth, and suddenly found himself being pressed against a wall without any idea how he had got there, with Harry’s mouth roaming down his jawline, his neck, towards his collarbones…

“Um,” he said breathlessly. “Maybe we should go somewhere a bit more private.”

“Suits me,” Harry murmured, breath cool against his skin; it made goosebumps rise up all over him, a crackle of electric excitement. “Your room or mine?”

Louis responded by diving for his bedroom door, which as always he’d forgotten to lock, and yanking Harry inside. He didn’t bother to switch the light on, just carried on where they’d left off, kicking the door shut behind them. Harry pressed him up against it, and for a crazy moment Louis thought Harry was going to pick him up, but instead he just went back to kissing his neck, jolts of pleasure shooting down his spine at every touch. Louis grabbed two handfuls of Harry’s shirt, feeling the knobs of his spine through the thin fabric, and then Harry nipped him on the collarbone and his eyes flew open, astonished by the sudden spike of pain. His chin rested on Harry’s shoulder so that he had a very clear view of the room beyond, which was quite clearly not his own.

The walls were plastered with an eclectic mixture of Disney Princess posters and weird gauzy draperies depicting witches and other dark creatures. The bed was covered in layers of throws and squashy-looking pillows, there were beanbags in the corner, and even in the darkness Louis could make out a lava lamp oozing away in the corner. For a moment he just stared in utter bewilderment at the scene; he had no idea whose room this was, although he surely must have passed through it before. Then again, he usually didn’t linger to take in his surroundings. 

“Harry,” he said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Um. Harry.”

“Mm?” Harry said vaguely.

“We, uh. This isn’t my room.”

Detaching himself briefly from Louis’ neck, Harry scanned the room, taking in the witchy shawls pinned to the walls and the legion of stuffed animals watching them solemnly from the desk.

“Oh,” he said. Then, he went right back to what he was doing.

“Babe,” Louis said, shoving at him. “Babe, stop, we can’t - we can’t do it in here. Not with those stuffed animals watching.”

“I’ll turn them to face the other way,” Harry said.

“Jesus, how drunk are you?”

“Significantly,” Harry said cheerfully. “I never thought you’d be shy.”

“I’m not shy, but I don’t want stuffed animals watching me get off with my boyfriend. The only thing creepier than stuffed animals at night is china dolls.”

“You’re adorable,” said Harry. 

“Shut up,” Louis said, and hauled him towards the nearest wardrobe.

Louis, who was used to navigating through the mess of other people’s possessions, did not struggle at all, but Harry loped straight over a heap of fluffy toy bunnies, stumbled, screamed as his foot plunged into a mass of fur, and then fell over, banging his head on the wardrobe door. Laughing helplessly, he rolled around, sending the stuffed animals to an early grave, whilst Louis tapped his foot disapprovingly.

“It tickles,” Harry giggled.

“You’re ridiculous,” Louis said grumpily. “You’re supposed to be rolling around on the floor with  _ me _ , remember?”

Harry responded by kissing one of the bunnies on the cheek.

It took an unseasonably long time for Louis to haul Harry through the wardrobe and into the next room, which he still didn’t recognise. This one smelt a little musty, and clearly hadn’t been used in several weeks; it would have been eerie if Harry wasn’t still cracking up with laughter for some inexplicable reason. Louis would have continued, but Harry sank down onto the floor and lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling with a goofy grin on his face. Rolling his eyes, Louis lay down next to him, listening to the music thumping down the corridor, some crap that he would never have consented to play at  _ his  _ party, had he still been supervising it.

What he didn’t expect was for Harry to roll over and pull Louis back towards him, and for the kissing to start again exactly where they had left off. Pulling frantically at him, Harry couldn’t seem to decide whether he wanted Louis to be on top, or whether he wanted to be on top of Louis. They compromised by clumsily lying on their sides and grabbing at each other; Harry’s long leg ended up thrown over Louis’ waist, pulling him in, and rather a lot of the buttons of Harry’s shirt ended up undone.

The angle was horrible - one of his hands was trapped underneath Harry and the other, his left, just flew clumsily over Harry’s bare skin without actually doing anything useful, so Louis decided to take the initiative and flipped Harry over onto his back, knocking the air out of him. Then, he straddled him, a hand on either side of his head, leaning in closer and closer until the tips of their noses were touching and he could taste the sharpness of the alcohol on Harry’s breath. Biting his lip, Harry had gone pliant underneath him, eyes bright with excitement. Louis leaned forwards even more and Harry put his hands up - to touch his face, maybe? - but Louis grabbed his wrists and held them down. Immediately, Harry twitched beneath him, and Louis felt a rush of triumph. 

He leaned in to brush his mouth against Harry’s, and then the music in the kitchen abruptly cut off, to be replaced with a burst of notes that would be familiar to anyone who had ever watched a movie with a cheesy sex scene. A song that Louis would forever associate with eighties movies and weird hair, parent sex between actors who were middle-aged before he was even born.  _ Let’s Get It On _ , by Marvin Gaye.

Groaning, Louis pressed his forehead against Harry’s; Harry had started giggling helplessly, the spell broken. Louis’ attempt to sexily pin him down was falling to ruins beneath him. Turning his face away, Harry laughed harder.

“Jesus Christ,” said Louis. “The world doesn’t want either of us to get laid.”

“Oh, come on,” Harry said, grinning, “this is an iconic sex song.”

“This is an ‘eighties parents doing missionary position with the lights off’ sex song,” Louis corrected, “and it kind of kills the mood when you laugh at me like that.”

“You’re just so cute when you’re sexually frustrated,” Harry said.

“How’s this for cute?” Louis asked, and he slid off Harry, undid the button of his jeans and practically ripped them off, leaving Harry exposed on his back with his jeans around his ankles and his cock visibly hard through his boxers.

Harry stopped laughing.

Louis rubbed a hand slowly over Harry’s dick, feeling him through the fabric, and Harry’s mouth opened slightly, hips shifting as he chased Louis’ touch. His tongue came out to wet his lips, and Louis rubbed him harder, watching as his eyelids fluttered. 

“You want me to?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said breathlessly.

“I’m not…” Louis shifted. “I won’t have sex. Not like this. I want us both to be sober for that. Sober and consenting and like, actually in a bed. But I want to touch you. I really want...can I?”

“Fuck,” Harry breathed. “All I want is for you to get on with it.”

Louis responded by slipping his hand underneath the waistband of Harry’s boxers and taking hold of his dick, running his thumb over the head to watch Harry’s reaction. It was a good one; he made a soft noise and propped himself up slightly on one elbow to watch. Louis pulled down his boxers, so that he could get a better view of his hand around the base Harry’s cock, watching as he gave one slow slide from base to tip and back again. 

Harry’s breath was coming faster now, his gaze fixated on Louis’ hand, hips moving restlessly as he chased the feeling, wanting more. Greedy. Torn between teasing him, Louis did it again, this time swiping the pad of his thumb over Harry’s slit, mesmerised. Moving his hand further up, he started stroking faster. Harry let out a shuddering gasp and let his arm drop, lying flat on the floor and losing himself to the sensation, and Louis suddenly felt a desperate urge to give him more, to hear him really lose it. 

He was barely aware of what he was doing, or what possessed him to do it, but he lowered his head and kissed the head of Harry’s cock.

The noise Harry made then surely wasn’t legal; a low moan that made Louis shiver and made his own cock ache like he was the one being touched. Harry’s hands twitched and for a moment Louis thought that Harry was going to grab his hair, but then he seemed to think better of it and his hands went back to the floorboards, fingernails raking at the wood as he struggled to control himself.

“Can I suck you?” Louis asked. “I want to taste you, please - please let me.”

“Yes,” Harry said desperately, “please, oh my god, please, Louis - ”

“Keep your hair on,” Louis said, and then he licked Harry from base to tip and swirled his tongue around the head for good measure.

He got a rhythm going fairly quickly, four slow bobs and ten quick ones, sliding right down to the base on every slow one and taking Harry’s cock as deeply as he could, breathing through his nose as Harry moaned and jerked underneath him. Every now and then, he shook things up with an extra slow slide right down to the base when Harry wasn’t expecting it, or by pulling off for a minute or two to pay extra attention to the head, swirling his tongue around it or using his hand to jerk Harry off slowly while he kissed the tip. 

Underneath him, Harry was panting, one hand finding its way into Louis’ hair, not to grab or pull it, or push him back down, but just to touch, his hair sliding through Harry’s fingers. He looked so beautiful, gazing up at Louis while his hips jerked frantically, even as he tried not to buck up into Louis’ mouth. Louis responded by taking him deeper, sucking harder, working both his hand and his mouth at the same time. The music had been shut off across the corridor.

“Louis - ”

The people in the kitchen were starting to chant, counting down to midnight. Louis didn’t stop. Harry was swearing softly underneath him, a litany of curses that all blurred together into nonsense as Louis sucked him, his jaw aching slightly and Harry’s fingers still feverishly running through his hair.

“TEN! NINE! EIGHT!”

“Louis, please - ”

Louis sped up, his hand racing up and down Harry’s shaft, moving his head rapidly up and down.

“SEVEN! SIX!”

Harry was almost sobbing, his fingernails clawing at the wooden boards. Louis steadied himself, lifted his left hand off the floor - he’d been leaning on his left arm - and grabbed Harry’s free hand with it.

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE!”

Harry started trying to sit up, gripping Louis’ hand so tightly that Louis knew he had to be close. He sucked on the head where it was most sensitive, tongue skating across Harry’s frenulum - 

“TWO!”

“Louis,” Harry said, “I - ”

He came on ‘one’, so suddenly that it shocked them both, hot spurts of come on Louis’ tongue. Gasping, Harry dropped back to the floor as Louis continued, working him through the aftershocks, swallowing as much as he could even as a little bit escaped from the corner of his mouth. 

Sitting up, he let Harry’s softening cock slide out of his mouth, and they met each other’s eyes in a moment of quiet so intense that he felt almost afraid of it for a moment - a stillness incomparable to anything else he had ever felt before. For a moment, the world had ground to a shuddering halt, no longer spinning on its axis. 

With a shaking hand, Harry reached up to thumb away the little dribble of come that Louis hadn’t quite caught. Louis turned his head and sucked Harry’s thumb into his mouth, licking it off; shocked, Harry pulled his thumb away.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” 

They both jumped at the uproar from the kitchen and as outside, fireworks started to go off with a series of bangs like gunshots. In the kitchen, people were drunkenly cheering, and someone had started an off-key rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” - probably Liam. Through the thin pane of the window, they could distantly hear the faraway sound of other people’s celebrations as the world welcomed in the new year.

Louis started laughing. He shocked himself a little by doing it, but soon found himself unable to stop; sinking down onto the floor, he lay spread-eagled on his back, looking up at the ceiling and shaking with laughter. Before long it had reached that strange stage of silent laughter that makes your ribs hurt and your cheeks ache; his shoulders heaved, and that seemed even funnier to him. 

At first, Harry looked at him as though he feared for his sanity - but before long, a smile began to spread across his own face. Then, the giggles started. He looked down at Louis, boxers still around his ankles, and laughed until he couldn’t sit up anymore; then he lay down beside him and kept doing it, clutching his belly as it started to hurt from the intensity of his laughter.

They took several minutes to calm down, and by that time Harry was starting to get sleepy. Curling into Louis’ side with the top of his head nestled against Louis’ neck, he closed his eyes. Louis held him close, so full of happiness that he wasn’t sure quite how he was able to contain it all.

“Happy New Year, babe,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Happy New Year.”

 


	12. Chapter 12

Niall announced his arrival back to the flat by bursting in on Louis whilst wearing a flat cap and carrying a picnic basket.

Louis, who had just come out of the shower, had just had a smoke and a wank whilst safely ensconced in the cubicle. He only had a towel around his waist for modesty and had been singing a medley of songs from different musicals. Yelling, he almost dropped the towel, managed to catch it just in time, and in doing so, dropped the cigarette butt which he’d just been about to flick out of the window. It landed in a flurry of red sparks and left a scorch mark on the wood. Afraid that it would catch fire, Louis raised his bare foot to stamp on it, realized that was a terrible idea, and leapt back just in time for Niall to grind the butt under his own shoe like a bug, crushing it into nothingness.

Overcome with a combination of relief and leftover terror, Louis collapsed onto his bed.

“Jesus fuck,” he said. “I’d forgotten how much it shits me up when you do that. And to think I’d actually almost started to miss you leaping out at me every five minutes.”

“This is an emergency,” Niall declared.

Louis sat up straight, grabbing at the towel to try and preserve some modicum of decency. “What?”

“You’re my best mate, right?”

“Obviously.”

“And you’d do anything for me, right?”

“...Yes?” Louis said dubiously.

Niall grabbed him by the shoulders. “I need you to come on a date with me.”

Louis stared into Niall’s eyes. The whole world had gone mad. He didn’t think he could possibly have been more stunned, even if Sarah had walked in wearing a nun’s habit and announced that Liam had come out as gay and was having a wild threesome shag-a-thon with Christian Bale and Robert Downey Jr.

“No offence, Niall, but I would rather eat my own toenails than go out with you.”

Niall made an impatient noise. “Not _with_ me with me! It’s me and Sarah’s first date since we had that fight at Christmas and we’ve just smoothed everything over, so she asked if we could go on a picnic - you know, like people used to do. Egg and cress sandwiches on the lawn. Maybe a sun umbrella.”

“It’s January,” Louis pointed out.

“I’d go and buy her a fucking sunbed and prop it open in front of her if it got her in a better mood,” Niall said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that she wants to take me Up The Hill.”

That explained the panic, and the unflattering hat. While the hill had been the site of one of the most romantic and wonderful nights of Louis’ life, for most people in their area, going Up The Hill was a euphemism for shagging in the bushes at the summit. In fact, it was barely even a euphemism. The hill was one of the few places in the immediate area that wasn’t littered with cigarette butts and tied-up bags of dog shit that had been thrown haphazardly at a waste bin and then abandoned when the target was missed. It was covered in heather, which was scratchy on bare skin but quite comfy if you spread a blanket over it first, and the bushes were tall enough and thick enough to award you privacy. Up The Hill was like their university’s version of Netflix and Chill, since it didn’t require a monthly subscription and was, supposedly, more fun. Louis, however, couldn’t imagine it would be enjoyable rolling around in a patch of gorse, getting wet leaves down your arse crack and grass stains on your knees. Especially if it was your virginity you were trying to lose whilst it drizzled overhead and dogs barked a few metres down the path, sniffing you out, ready to stick a cold, wet nose in the first unmentionable part of your anatomy that they encountered. He understood Niall’s panic.

“You want me to third wheel.”

“I’ll do anything,” Niall said, falling to his knees with a thump. His face contorted with pain, but he stayed heroically put.

“God, get up, I can practically feel the arthritis developing,” Louis said, pulling him to his feet. “I’ll come. But she won’t be happy.”

“It’s okay,” Niall said. “I’m going to tell her that it was your idea.”

“What?”

“You’re just so lonely,” he said, with a manic gleam in his eyes. “You can’t handle being by yourself right now. You’re in a time of great emotional upheaval. It might help if you get teary eyed and hug us both a lot and thank us for being here for you in your time of need. She eats that shit up. She thinks she’s Mother Teresa or some shit.”

“You’d have to be Mother fucking Teresa to put up with you,” Louis grumbled. “I’m coming, but I’m not making any sandwiches.”

Niall kissed him on the cheek. “You’re my hero.”

“When we die,” Louis said, “I expect your eternal servitude in the afterlife and a whole lot of grovelling.”

“I love you,” Niall said cheerfully.

“Of course you do,” Louis said. “Now get rid of that fucking hat, you look like Ian McKellen in _Vicious_.”

“What’s wrong with this hat?” Niall asked defensively, grabbing the brim.

“I have never seen an item singlehandedly more likely to make someone not want to shag you,” Louis said.

They both thought for a moment. Louis imagined how it would feel to roll onto a thistle mid-shag.

“On second thoughts,” he said, “keep the hat.”

~*~

Louis had hardly expected Sarah to be impressed when he gatecrashed their date, but he had underestimated exactly how unimpressed she was going to be. When he and Niall reached the top off the hill, panting and carrying the picnic basket between them, Sarah’s eyes immediately narrowed to little slits, like an angry cat’s. She stormed over to them, and Louis could practically see the air sizzling around her.

“What’s _he_ doing here?” She hissed, none too quietly.

“Shh, babe, shh,” Niall said hastily, letting go of his end of the picnic basket.

Louis staggered under the unexpected weight and almost dropped it on his foot; Niall rushed to pacify Sarah whilst Louis dragged the basket along the ground, wondering exactly how many egg sandwiches there were in there. It seemed to weigh as much as a small elephant.

Niall drew Sarah aside and started muttering to her, again, not particularly quietly. Grunting as he hauled the picnic basket after them, Louis caught snatches of words like “lonely” and “desperate”. Gritting his teeth, Louis started making a list of all the outrageous favours he was going to demand from Niall once this was over.

Eventually, Sarah seemed to calm down slightly and consented to stay, and Louis spread out the picnic blanket and discovered that the weight of it was mostly due to all the plates and cutlery that they had just carted up the slope. Swallowing unpleasant comments about being a pack mule, Louis crammed his cheeks like a hamster, with a butty bulging in each one, safely keeping himself quiet while Niall and Sarah talked. For all Niall’s assurances that things were all right between them now, Louis noticed that Niall seemed very dicey around her, acquiescing to her on everything, shifting often, and eating with his mouth diligently closed, which was unusual for him. Sarah, for her part, endeavoured to keep constant contact with some part of his body; resting on his knee, fingertips brushing his arm, knee pressed against his, head on his shoulder. Louis felt like he was watching a soap opera being performed by two very bad actors.

“Well,” he said. “This is nice.”

“It’s a shame you can’t stay long,” said Sarah.

“Eh?”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Nope,” Louis said cheerfully. “Free as the wind, me. I can do this all day.”

Sarah very aggressively bit into another sandwich and gooey egg mush spurted all over her chin. It looked distinctly filthy. A grin flared up on Louis’ face. Niall shot him a look that warned him not to say anything; Louis gave him a look straight back that said he simply couldn’t resist such an opportunity.

“You’ve got a little something there,” he said, pointing.

Sarah attempted to wipe it away, missing the spot entirely.

“Don’t worry,” Louis said, offering her a serviette. “Egg is good for the skin, innit? A facial never did anybody any harm.”

Niall glared at him. Louis tried in vain to hide his grin.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sarah said icily, dabbing at the egg on her face.

The temperature up the hill plummeted by about ten degrees, and Louis could practically see Niall scoping out his escape route. Unable to resist the urge to taunt him - he owed him a couple of jabs, if only for the ‘lonely’ and ‘desperate’ comments - he said cheerfully, “So how’s your love life?”

“Fine, thanks,” said Sarah coldly. “How’s yours?”

“Oh, great,” Louis said. “He’s got a nice little body, my Xan. He likes to keep in shape.”

“Really,” said Sarah. It came out flat and sharp, not turned up at the end like a question ought to be.

“Yep. I’ve been getting him to watch all my Marvel movies. It’s his birthday next month, so we’re going to go to Thorntons and eat as many free samples as we can swindle from the chocolate fountain, and then we’re going to watch a terrible movie and laugh at it, and then probably fuck in the moonlight whilst listening to other people’s party music.”

He went off into a little reverie thinking about it. Harry had agreed to take a whole day off studying in order to do everything Louis had listed above, and Louis was having a happy little daydream about being alone in Thorntons and drizzling melted chocolate all over Harry’s bare stomach when he was interrupted by a scathing noise from Sarah’s direction.

“Come off it, Louis. We all know you don’t really have a boyfriend. Xander Helsby is just some guy you made up to disguise the fact that you’re not actually getting any.”

“I do so have a boyfriend,” Louis said, outraged. “And I’m getting plenty, thank you very much.”

“Please, we all know your cock’s so shrivelled and lonely it’s practically started yelling at small children to get off its lawn.”

A nasty part of Louis thought that was probably a bit rich coming from her, since unless she was cheating on Niall she was probably growing cobwebs between her legs.

“You know it’s a bit sad of you to keep pretending like you’re getting a great shag off a stripper who doesn’t even exist,” Sarah said. “And then tag along cock-blocking on other people’s dates just because you haven’t got a life.”

Louis looked at Niall in utter indignation, waiting for his friend to rise to his defence, but Niall was guzzling from a bottle of water and determinedly not looking at either of them. Traitor.

“I find that very offensive,” Louis said, “and you shouldn’t judge other people by your own standards. I know for a fact you’re not getting any - ”

“At least I don’t pretend that I am!”

“No, you just take out your sexual frustration on the rest of us poor bastards,” said Louis. “I’ll have you know Niall asked me to come here today and I feel personally victimised by - ”

“Louis!” Niall hissed, spraying water everywhere.

Sarah rounded on him, eyes blazing. “You _asked_ him to come? You asked your best friend to come and _ruin our date_?”

“No,” Niall said hastily, “I just thought it would be nice if we could all be mates - ”

“I’m your _girlfriend_! What’s next, you’re going to ask him to sit at the end of the bed when we eventually have sex so that he can give you pointers?”

“I’ve given him plenty already,” Louis said.

“You’re taking sex tips from a gay man? A gay man with an _imaginary boyfriend_?” Sarah screeched.

“My boyfriend is not imaginary!”

“Shut up!” Niall shouted. “Both of you just shut the fuck up!”

They both stared at him. Chest heaving, Niall had stood up without either of them noticing and was standing on a pile of egg and cress sandwiches. He had gone bright red in the face, had spilt water all down his front and was shaking slightly. Louis blinked up at him, unused to seeing Niall so worked up. He had always been of the opinion that you could trample on Niall with hob-nailed boots and use him as a mop and he wouldn’t utter a word of protest.

“Can none of you go five minutes without talking about sex? Is that all you care about? Who’s shagging who, who’s getting any, who isn’t getting any, your eight favourite positions and a blow-by-blow account of your last ten hook-ups in lurid detail - I’m sick of hearing about it!”

Sarah stood up. She straightened her skirt, gave Niall a look so icy that it could have given him frostbite, and slammed the lid of the picnic basket shut with her foot.

“I see,” she said. “Well in that case I won’t inflict my company on you any longer. I’m sorry if our filthy conversational topics sullied your precious virginial ears, you sanctimonious prick. Go fuck yourself.”

“Sarah,” said Niall pleadingly.

Ignoring him, Sarah whirled around and marched off down the hill, wind whipping her hair around her head in a tornado of chestnut brown. As he watched her go, Niall took a very deep breath; once she had disappeared from view, he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His lips moved slightly. Louis realized that he was counting under his breath.

The wind had turned sharp, pinching at their cheeks and snatching at their hair. Goosebumps rose on Louis’ arms. Niall’s cheeks had grown blotchy and red, and he was hunched against the wind. It struck Louis that he looked strangely lonely, as though he was stood alone on the hilltop, struggling with some conundrum that others could scarcely comprehend.

Then, his eyes opened.

“Thanks a lot, Louis,” he said.

He took off down the hill, head bowed, shirt flapping wildly around him. The ugly flat-cap was bunched in one clenched fist. Louis wondered if he was going after Sarah, or just going somewhere that Louis wasn’t.

Apparently, his lies were driving his friends away as well as risking his relationship with Harry. He’d been balancing on a precipice for a while and was finally starting to lose his balance. It seemed that he had two choices; abandon one lie and embarrass himself by admitting that Xander was made up, hence continuing with the other lie, that he had no boyfriend - or reveal that his boyfriend was very real and living just down the corridor, hence betraying Harry’s trust. The secrecy of their relationship had never been more frustrating to Louis as it was in that moment. He saw no real reason why they were still hiding it, other than Harry’s ridiculous, self-imposed rules that were causing more harm than good.

Muttering to himself, Louis began to clear away the picnic things, dumping the crushed sandwiches into a nearby bin and trying to stack the dirty plates in the same way they had originally been placed into the basket. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the knack, and they slipped and slid around, which would risk them breaking and also throw off his balance when he attempted to carry the basket back to the flat on his own.

Fighting an intense urge to start hurling plates down the hill, Louis lay back down on the blanket and stared up at the sky. On the night that he and Harry had spent in each other’s arms not far from this very spot, it had been magical, stars strewn across the skies above them, not a cloud in sight. Today, it was just a blanket of grey, and even as he scowled up at the clouds, a spot of rain hit him right in the eye. Then another on his nose, running down to hit him on the cheek and continue downwards. More rain swiftly followed, and for several minutes Louis just lay furiously on the dampening blanket as the heavens opened above his head.

When he was starting to shiver uncontrollably and his clothes had started clinging to his skin, he cursed, chucked the rest of the remnants of the picnic into the basket and began staggering down the hill with it, so angry that he scarcely cared if he dropped it and broke all the plates, or twisted an ankle, or even if he fell down a rabbit hole like Alice and plummeted into nothingness. Actually, he thought, that might almost have been preferable.

The overarching thought that occurred to him as he struggled back towards the flat was that he wished he’d never tried to get Niall a girlfriend.

~*~

Louis was wet and cold when he burst into Harry’s room, and this in itself had put him into such a bad mood that he should have known that human interaction was a terrible idea. Just looking at Harry, who looked enviably cosy in an enormous sweater, glasses perched on his nose and his hair in a bun, made him inexplicably angry. His arms ached from lugging that damn picnic basket down the hill. His pride was hurt from Sarah’s taunting. He felt a vague but persistent urge to punch something. Perhaps a wall. Perhaps himself.

“Are you ashamed of me?” He demanded.

“What?” Harry said, pushing the glasses up to perch on top of his head.

“I’m pretty embarrassing to be around, right? Fail grades. Borderline alcoholic. Loud, rude, unpleasant. You probably don’t want to be seen associating with a guy like that, am I right? Lawyers look bad with a loud-mouthed gutter rat on their arm.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Just a load of bollocks, as usual!” Louis said bitterly. “What would you expect from someone else like me? That’s why you haven’t told anyone, isn’t it? Why you don’t want people to know? It gives you a bad reputation to be seen with someone like me, doesn’t it?”

“Louis,” Harry said. He stood up, pushing back the chair at his desk. The legs scraped on the floor, a grating noise that only made Louis’ building anger flare. “I think you need to calm down.”

“Calm down?” Louis demanded. “ _You’re_ telling _me_ to calm down?” He gave a bitter, humourless laugh and hated the sound of it as soon as it came out. “That’s a bit rich, coming from you.”

Harry gave him a level look that instantly made Louis feel ashamed of himself. In that moment he felt like he was six years old again, being scolded by his mother for pinching his new baby sister and making her cry because she was so small and round and noisy and everyone looked at her instead of him. There was such an old and reproachful look in Harry’s eyes that Louis didn’t know what to do with himself; yell harder, or go and sit in the corner like a naughty schoolboy, sufficiently chastised. All he knew was that it ignited a flash-burn of loathing within himself that confirmed what he had already known; he was unwanted and unreasonable and undeserving of Harry, and through his own obnoxious irrationality, he had just caused Harry to realize it.

“I think you should take a minute before you say something you’ll regret,” Harry said quietly.

Louis swore and kicked the bed-frame. It didn’t help. What he really wanted was a fight, but he didn’t get it. The bedframe just sat stoically, judging him, and he could feel Harry’s wary eyes on him too, clearly expecting a scene. His skin felt too small. For want of something else to do, he sat down on the bed, even though he was wet.

Harry gave him a piece of paper. Nonplussed, Louis looked at it, turned it over several times, trying to figure out if there was some sort of trick.

“Try ripping it up,” Harry said. “I find that helps.”

Within seconds the paper was in two halves; several more and it was in quarters, and eighths. Louis then focused on turning it into confetti, crumpling up the pieces in his fist and throwing them as hard as he could at the wall. It helped a little, but all too soon the paper was just scraps on the ground, too small for ripping it to be satisfying any more. Wordlessly, Harry handed him another piece of paper, and then a magazine, some gossip rag that was thicker and more pleasing to tear. By the time he had turned it into trashy paper snowflakes, he felt a little less like breaking things and a little more like screaming into a pillow until his throat hurt. He grabbed one off the bed and did so, feeling stupid but still relishing in letting it all out.

By the time he was finished, panting and embarrassed, one of Harry’s inspirational throw pillows moist with his spit and crumpled from where he’d grabbed it, Louis felt a lot better.

“What happened?” Harry asked, sitting next to him.

He rested his head on Louis’ shoulder. Louis was still sopping wet and shivering, and Harry flinched slightly when Louis’ freezing cold clothes came into contact with his skin, but he didn’t pull away.

“I had a bust-up with Niall and his girlfriend,” Louis admitted. “They’ve been fighting about sex and Niall dragged me into it. Seemed to think I’d make a good mediator. Instead it turned into Sarah taking out her frustrations on both of us, giving us both a good tongue-lashing and them both storming off, and now neither of them are talking to me _or_ to each other. So that went spectacularly.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said.

“Me too,” Louis said. “Sarah was a really great girl when I met her, but lately she’s turned into a sex-obsessed harpy, and Niall’s just become impossible to deal with. I really don’t get what his issue is. All he has to do is fuck her and literally all of his problems will be solved!”

“That’s not your decision, it’s his,” Harry said. “And if Sarah’s really being so nasty about him not wanting to have sex with her, she’s not worth losing his virginity to. That’s a big deal for some people. Why would he want to lose it to someone who has such little consideration for his feelings?”

Louis buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know. I just...I did some stupid shit. I feel like a shit mate because I don’t understand his problem and he knows it. Every piece of advice I give him, I don’t mean it, because in my head I’m just thinking that he should just man up and get it over with. I fucked around with so many people when I was younger that sex isn’t a big deal to me any more.”

“It doesn’t have to be. That doesn’t make you a bad person. But it doesn’t mean that it isn’t still important to someone else,” Harry reminded him. “And at least some part of you must know that. You never forced me into it.”

“I suppose not,” said Louis.

They were quiet for a time. Just when Louis’ turmoil was starting to ebb, Harry stood, went rooting around in his drawers, and pulled out some tracksuit bottoms, a Christmas jumper, some boxers and fluffy socks. In silence, he peeled Louis’ wet clothes off him, patted him with the duvet to dry him off, and dressed him again. To Louis’ surprise, he didn’t find anything sexual about it; his cock stayed soft throughout the entirety of the proceedings, and he didn’t think it was because it was cold.

When he was dressed again, in a red jumper with little bells on it and the comfiest socks he’d ever worn, Harry astonished him by producing a flask from underneath the desk and presenting him with a cup of tea.

“I don’t like constantly getting up for a refill when I’m studying,” he explained,

“You’re incredible,” Louis said weakly, hands wrapped around the plastic cup.

Harry just smiled at him.

Louis was halfway through his cup of tea and feeling decidedly more human when Harry said, “So are you going to tell me exactly how this fight with Niall and Sarah made you decide I was ashamed to be seen with you?”

Squirming, Louis gazed into the depths of his tea. “I just don’t see why we’re hiding.”

“You know why, Louis. I can’t have any distractions.”

“That’s not a good enough reason.”

Harry frowned. “I told you Mike checks up on me.”

“That doesn’t explain why we have to lie to our friends.”

“They’re your friends,” Harry reminded him. “Not mine.”

“But they could be!” Louis grabbed his hand, almost spilling his tea in the process. “I’m tired of this, Harry. You’re important to me. I want to share you. This whole secrecy bullshit… it isn’t fun any more. People all over the world have to hide their relationships for terrible reasons and we’re just playing at it.”

“Listen to me,” Harry said. “How things are now...it’s working. And if things change, it might not stay that way.”

“It isn’t working,” Louis said. “Not for me.”

“What are you saying?” Harry asked. “You don’t want to be with me any more?”

“What? That’s completely the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m saying I want to be with you properly, without all this lying and sneaking around bollocks. What exactly happens if we get caught? What’s so terrible? You’re an adult, you’re already out to your family. Maybe you get a few disapproving looks for being with a gobby drama student instead of some posh nob lawyer type, maybe you get a few lectures about prioritising your studies - ”

“Maybe I get pulled out of university and made to work at home and lose every remaining piece of my sanity…”

“You’re an adult, Harry, they can’t just pull you out like that.”

“I don’t get the same things you get,” Harry said. “You get a lot more financial aid than I do. My whole family are lawyers, we barely get any help at all, so all my university funding goes straight through them. Apart from student loans, they pay my rent, they pay my tuition, they pay for a good eighty percent of my degree. If they withdraw that backing, what am I supposed to do? I have to rely on them.” He gave Louis a sideways look. “How much of this is actually about us, and how much is just about you wanting to brag about getting laid?”

Louis’ mouth fell open with a little pop. “I - how dare you?”

“Oh, come on, Louis, I know they’ve been ribbing you about that fake boyfriend of yours, making jibes about him not being real. If they haven’t been doing it to your face, I’ve certainly heard them doing it behind your back. I know that’s not the kind of thing you’d be able to take lying down.”

“Are you accusing me of putting my _pride_ before our relationship?”

“Well, aren’t you? You never cared about hiding until people started calling you a liar.”

“Well, I am one, aren’t I?” Louis said bitterly.

“You never cared before. If it’s that much of a bother to you, maybe we should just - ”

“What?” Louis said. “Maybe we should just _what_?”

They fell silent for a moment. Louis had felt that anger rising up again, but the longer he looked at Harry, the more he felt it draining away again as though someone had pulled the plug on it. There were dark circles underneath Harry’s eyes. The glasses, which were hanging from the neck of his shirt, were new. He remembered Harry mentioning that he’d made an appointment at the opticians, concerned that he was having to squint to read some of his notes. Privately, Louis was of the opinion that he’d damaged his eyes from peering at his textbooks in poor lighting, but he’d never thought Harry would actually end up needing glasses because of it. His nails were bitten down to little stubs.

“Never mind,” Harry said tiredly. “Never mind.”

“You look tired,” Louis said.

“I’ve got work to do.” He picked up a textbook and started flipping through it, the glossy pages flapping.

“Don’t do that,” Louis said, grabbing Harry’s hand when he ignored him. “Harry! Don’t just stick your nose in that thing when I’m trying to talk to you.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk to you,” Harry said. “I’m trying really hard with this, Louis, but I told you from the beginning that things would have to be this way, and you said you were okay with it. Now it’s actually happening it seems like you can’t handle it.”

“I didn’t think it would feel like this. I thought it would be all sexy, kissing in cupboards and around corners and nearly getting caught every five minutes. It’s not like that. It’s lonely. I’m tired of keeping you to myself.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Harry said, dropping the textbook onto the bed beside him. “Maybe… maybe we can sort something out. Hold on for me until the summer, okay? Just a few more months. We’ve made it this far. If I do well in my first year and then tell my parents about you, they’ll see that I can handle studying and having you around at the same time and then they won’t come down on me like a sack of bricks when they find out. They aren’t opposed to me being happy, just to me prioritising my social life over my grades. No one wants to see me find a happy balance more than they do. Just… stick it out for a few more months. That’s all it’ll take. Then I pass first year and they’ll be happy with me and nobody gets in trouble.”

Louis sat and thought about that for a while. After a minute or two of consideration, he simply sank back down onto the bed until he was lying horizontally across it, the top of his head skimming the wall. His legs hung slightly off the end, feet not quite touching the floor. Harry lay back to mimick him, but his own longer legs dangled comically from the bed-frame, knees bent. Louis couldn’t help smiling at the sight.

“I tossed a coin, you know,” he said.

Harry turned his head towards him.

“On us,” he elaborated. “After our first date. Remember? It ended kind of badly, you rushed off in a taxi by yourself and I wandered round town in a mood, and it was raining...I sat at this bus stop, and I said to myself, toss a coin, and if it’s heads, you go on another date. Tails, you walk away.”

“You got heads?” Harry asked, smiling faintly.

Louis snorted. “Nah. I got tails. Several times, actually. I remember being pissed, like the coin wasn’t even going to give you a chance. That was when I realized. It didn’t matter what the stupid coin said. I’d already made up my mind, I just hadn’t admitted it.”

“You ever think fate was trying to tell you something?”

“Yes,” said Louis. “It was telling me to stop being a dick and take responsibility for my own decisions.” He reached out to touch Harry’s face, one thumb lightly dancing across his cheek. “I’m sorry. I already chose you. I know that, really. I can handle a few more months.”

“Thank you,” said Harry. “Louis.”

“Yeah?”

Harry paused for a moment, mouth hanging open - then, he closed it. Rolling onto his back, he tilted his head back, eyes closed, a small smile on his face.

“Nothing,” he said.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little prior warning: this chapter contains hand jobs, blowjobs, fingering, anal sex, some very minor public groping, dirty talk and all that jazz. I've never been particularly great at writing this kind of stuff so if it sucks (pun slightly intended) then... sorry.
> 
> Oh, and keep an eye out for someone we all know in this chapter! :)

Of course, things could not remain uneventful for long. It appeared that Louis had ended up living in a flat full of the most dramatic and unfortunate people in the universe. Over the course of the next week, Perrie had to be taken to A&E, thanks to an unfortunate incident with a pair of false lashes, and Jade got food poisoning. Niall and Sarah made up for a very short time, since they had a common enemy: temporarily united in their dislike for Louis, they ignored him for several days until Sarah came to see Niall and got stuck outside the flat in the rain, with only Louis to let her in. A heart-to-heart and a bottle of strawberry milkshake Oddka later, and she was snuggled up to him, murmuring vague platitudes, and Niall caved soon after that. Sadly, the collapse of their united front led to the renewed collapse of their relationship and they then had a series of blazing rows when she came to stay the night, which Louis could clearly hear booming through the walls, even with both pillows over his head.

Then, Harry’s panic attacks came back.

He’d been miraculously free of them for a while, the jagged fingers uncurling from around his ribcage, letting loose their hooks. Hence, when he had another one it took him completely by surprise, like a mugger grabbing him from behind, strangling him. It happened when Louis was right there with him, which was a small mercy, but with Harry choking and crying on the bed in front of him, his own anxiety rising, he almost wished he hadn’t been there to see it. The first attack concluded with Harry furiously pummelling one of his throw pillows; he’d thought he was over it, and was angry with himself for not being cured as suddenly as he’d expected. He then kicked Louis out and spent the rest of the night studying to try and catch up on the work that had been causing him so much stress in the first place, fucking up his sleep pattern in the process.

Louis came into the kitchen one night to find Harry pacing agitatedly up and down the kitchen with a mug of coffee in his hands, wearing an oversized, ugly sweater with his new glasses shoved precariously on top of his head, steamed up from the heat. He was muttering to himself, spouting legal jargon that Louis didn’t understand.

For a while Louis stood in the doorway and watched him drink the entire mug of coffee, then brew another, then spill it on his notes and fly into a rage. At that point, he intervened, rushing in with kitchen roll to help mop up the mess.

“It’s four in the morning, babe,” he said. “I don’t think you need any more coffee.”

“I have an essay,” Harry said, “I have to know it, I can’t - everyone will - ten percent of my grade, I can’t, have to finish it, needs doing right now, oh God, I messed up my notes, I can’t sleep, I’m so fucking tired, Louis, fuck, I - ”

“Harry,” Louis said sharply, “Harry, stop it - ”

His hands were shaking. Badly. Coffee slopped over the sides of the mug and splattered to the floor, droplets splashing onto Harry’s bare feet so that he flinched; cursing, Louis herded him away from the spillage, silently thanking God for the fluffy slippers Jesy had left in his room, which he’d worn to stave off the chill of the kitchen floor. Coffee seeped into them, but didn’t burn him. He’d buy her a new pair of slippers.

“Sit down,” he said, pushing Harry into a chair. “Put that mug down.”

Harry was breathing in horrible, harsh rasps.

“Are you having a panic attack?” Louis asked.

Nodding frantically, Harry looked up at him with eyes that didn’t really see him. They looked upon Louis with fear, like he was a stranger looming over him. Louis had seen that look before, knew it was just the anxiety that had Harry in its throes, shaking him up so badly that he couldn’t recognise who he was seeing. It didn’t chill him any less than it had before.

“Have you been having a lot?”

“Yeah,” Harry managed.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just - ”

Harry seized Louis’ arm with a ferocity that frightened them both, dragging him to sit at the table beside him; Louis slipped, almost missed the chair that Harry kicked out for him, and had to grab at the table to save himself. Once he was safely seated, he took both of Harry’s hands in his and tried not to react as Harry began to crush his fingers. This wasn’t a noisy panic attack, like the ones Louis used to get. Aside from his ragged breathing, there was little on the outside to display the riot going on inside Harry’s brain, only little clues, like his fingers clenched tightly around Louis’, nails digging in, his slightly flared nostrils, and his eyes. They were wide and terrified, and Louis could see that Harry was rapidly getting locked in, his panic throwing up walls around him that would only make him worse.

“Talk to me, Harry,” he said.

“And say what?”

Good question. Louis’ head spun. “Tell me something I don’t know about you. Tell me the name of your first pet. Go.”

“He was a hamster,” Harry said. “Called Steve. He was really a girl. They got mixed up at the pet shop.”

“Steve the hamster,” Louis said. “I like it. I had a hamster, once. I called him Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All. Funnily enough my mother wouldn’t tell the vet his full name. What kind of hamster was it?”

“Syrian,” Harry told him. His hands were shaking so badly that they jarred Louis’ fingers.

“Mine was a dwarf hamster. Evil little shits. Adorable, but evil. I used to try and make him run through cardboard tubes and stand on his back legs, but he would just chew up the tubes and bite my fingers. Is this helping?”

“No,” Harry said. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“Favourite colour. Harry. Tell me your favourite colour.”

“I don’t have one,” Harry croaked.

“Everyone has a favourite colour. Pick one. Right now, just pick a random colour.”

“I don’t know, yellow?”

“Well, I guess _someone_ has to pick yellow,” Louis said.

“I like yellow!”

“Yellow is the colour of piss.”

“It’s a spring colour,” Harry said defensively. “Like daffodils. Buttercups. Dandelions. Yellow makes me think of gardens.”

“So basically yellow is the colour of hayfever?”

Harry snorted. His grip on Louis’ hands had eased, so that he no longer felt like he’d stuck his fingertips into a mangle.

“Feeling better?” He asked cautiously.

Harry took several deep, experimental breaths. “I think so,” he said. “That was only a little one. I think you got to me before it could really set in. Why did you start asking me all that stuff about family pets?”

Louis shrugged. “I read somewhere that when someone is having a panic attack that you’re supposed to ask them lots of easy, simple questions. I think the questions are probably supposed to be medically related, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I decided to be nosey instead.”

“You called your hamster Stormageddon,” Harry said, smiling faintly.

“Yes,” agreed Louis. “My sister said he looked like more of a Julian, but it was too late by that point. You never told me your panic attacks had come back.”

He practically saw Harry ice over like a lake in winter. “You know they have. You were there the other day. You saw it.”

“Yet something tells me that wasn’t just a one-off. They’ve been back for a while, haven’t they? You just didn’t tell me.”

“And when exactly was I supposed to bring something like that up?” Harry demanded. “How did your lecture go, Louis? You want to nip out later and grab Nando's? Oh, yeah, I’ve spent every night for the past week shaking and crying on my bedroom floor, phone in one hand while I decided whether or not to call myself an ambulance for the heart attack I feel like I’m having.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I just want to help you.”

“I don’t think this is the sort of thing you can help me with,” Harry said, and he got up and made himself an enormous glass of water, drinking it all.

By the time he’d downed the whole thing, breathless and with a wet chin, he seemed a little more calm. Louis stayed seated at the table, not wanting to rile him up again, hating the truth of it. There was very little he could do in this situation, other than rub Harry’s back and try and help him through it. Wait on the other side of the tunnel for the darkness to recede.

“Have you thought about seeing someone?”

“I did see someone,” Harry said. “Actually, I saw two or three people. One of them told me it was just my personality. The other two made me follow-up appointments and suggested I go to group therapy, _after_ I’d spent twelve weeks stuck at the bottom of a waiting list. The mental health care in this country is complete crap. I’m better off on my own with meditation videos on Youtube and an ocean’s worth of herbal tea.”

“Have you ever thought about just doing more of what makes you happy?” Louis asked. “I’ve been saying this from the beginning, but working like this is only going to make things worse. It’s like you’re a McDonalds built to run half the day that’s just converted to 24-hours. Your fuses are blowing, lights are going out. The food tastes like crap. Your staff all want to murder each other. Try closing up for a few hours. Read a book. Watch TV. Maybe. Unless you’re like me, and that would lead to locking yourself up for a week to watch every episode ever made. There must be something that can relax you for a few hours.”

“The one thing I really miss is taking baths,” Harry said. “I used to be able to spend a good few hours soaking in a bath. Bath bomb, a few bubble bars, maybe a book. Candles on the side. Does wonders for my back. Did I ever tell you about my back? I get really bad pain sometimes. Too much time bent over a desk. Get your mind out of the gutter,” he added, as a grin flashed across Louis’ face. “You know what I mean. A bath used to work that right out. I spent hours in the bathroom over Christmas; my parents thought I had the runs. They were shoving Imodium under the door by the bucketful. I didn’t want to tell them I was just spending some quality time with with the Experimenter bath bomb and a John Green novel.”

“You sap,” Louis said. “...Paper Towns or TFIOS?”

Harry made a face. “Paper Towns is shit. Looking For Alaska is my favourite. But there’s barely enough space in my uni bathroom for a bidet, let alone a bathtub. And you can’t read pretentious young adult contemporary novels in the shower. So that puts the kaibosh on that idea.”

“Hmm,” said Louis. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Are you plotting something?”

“I might be,” Louis said. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

“I have a very bad feeling about this.”

“Babe,” Louis said, feigning outrage. “You’ll see. All you have to do is trust me.”

~*~

It had taken a ridiculous amount of organising, far more than Louis had ever expected. For a start, he’d been forced to embarrass himself by wandering around the grounds asking everyone he met if they knew anyone who had a bath. Most of them responded with sarcasm, or a dirty look, or backed away as if they thought he might be asking because he hadn’t washed since the beginning of term. But eventually, after a lot of asking around, he managed to win over a girl in his drama class by telling her the whole, long-winded reason of why he needed one, and she was so enamoured with the idea that she got him in contact with a guy named Zayn who lived in a ridiculously clean student house a few streets away.

It took a lot of bartering to persuade Zayn to clear out of his own house for an afternoon and loan Louis his freakishly clean bathroom, but eventually, after offering him a shit-ton of weed (hopefully he could convince Niall to find him some more, if he couldn’t shift any from Harry’s bathroom) Zayn conceded, hence Louis was leading Harry up the pebbled driveway with a scarf over his eyes, watching his feet like a hawk to make sure he didn’t fall over a poorly placed rock. Since Harry could trip over thin air on a good day, Louis didn’t quite trust him to walk blindfolded without ending up flat on his face.

“But where are we going? And why do I have to have this scarf on my face?” Harry complained, tugging at the fringing that was tickling his nostrils.

Louis took a hand away from his back to swat at his hand; Harry stumbled and only Louis’ reflexes saved him as he seized the back of his shirt to yank him upright again. Typical. “Oi, leave that alone, you’ll ruin the surprise.”

“It itches!”

“Well, sorry, princess, I didn’t have a spare silk scarf to hand. Or would you have preferred cashmere?”

“I’d prefer to be able to see where I’m going; I feel like I’m going to run into a door.”

Privately, Louis thought that was very likely. “Impossible. As if I’d let you.”

“You might,” Harry said darkly. “It’s the sort of thing you’d find funny.”

“Well. Yeah, but not if I caused it. If you walked into a door completely of your own volition, that’d be a different story. You’re my responsibility right now, and I promise I’ll fight any door that gets in your way, okay? Up.”

“What?”

“Your foot, lift up your foot, we’re going up a step.”

Harry lifted his foot obediently and allowed Louis to guide him onto the front step. He then stood as Louis banged on the door.

Zayn seemed to take an age to open it, and when he finally came to the door it became apparent why; he had dressed like he was about to step onto the catwalk during fashion week, wearing a leather jacket dripping with shiny zips, and skinny jeans so tight that even looking at them made Louis’ legs hurt. He smelt smoky; Louis inhaled appreciatively.

“Are you trying to break my door down?”

“Not today,” said Louis. “Wait until you piss me off.”

“Who’s that?” Harry asked plaintively, pawing at the scarf.

“Leave it alone, darling,” Louis said, pulling his hand away and then holding onto it to make sure he didn’t do it again. Then, he realized he’d just called Harry ‘darling’ in front of a stranger - a ludicrously attractive, leather-wearing stranger who probably owned a motorbike - and felt a sudden urge to break something or start swearing, just to seem a bit more manly.

Zayn appeared to be sneering at him, but perhaps that was his natural expression; he’d been wearing it since he came to the door. And, in fact, every time Louis had spoken to him. It didn’t help matters that Louis kind of wanted to punch him for having a nice house, although he didn’t even want to know how Zayn could afford to live in a three bed house on the kind of money you got from a student loan. Summoning forth all his willpower, he dredged up a smile and plastered it on, papering his face like a wall.

“Thanks, mate, I’ll take it from here. You’re a pal.”

Zayn tossed him the keys. “Leave them under the mat. Don’t break anything. Have fun!”

He pushed past them, jostling Harry slightly, and crunched down the driveway. Louis rolled his eyes and guided Harry into the house with a hand at the small of his back, pausing to make sure that he didn’t walk into anything before he locked the door behind them. He didn’t want to risk any of Zayn’s housemates walking in, if he had any, although, come to think of it, they’d probably have keys. Still, at least he’d get a bit more warning if they tried to let themselves in. After a moment’s deliberation, he left the keys in the lock. That’d slow them down a bit.

Harry stood patiently at the foot of the stairs, hands clasped in front of him, awaiting further instructions. For some reason, that made a shiver run through him, the idea that Harry would just wait for Louis to tell him what to do... An intriguing concept, but perhaps not one to explore for the first time in a stranger’s pristine hallway. Clearing his throat, Louis drew closer.

“I’ve got a few preparations to make, babe. Come and sit down for a few minutes, yeah?”

“Can I take the blindfold off?”

For a moment, Louis hesitated, but what could Harry possibly glean from looking around Zayn’s living room? Besides, forcing him to leave the blindfold on might bore him, making him more likely to wander where he shouldn’t… or, it might send him into a panic. At the moment Harry seemed docile, but Louis knew all too well how a panic attack could sneak up on you; one minute you were fine, the next minute it had you by the throat, shoving a clawed hand into your mouth, down and down and down to seize your heart and rip it out until you felt it gutter into nothing. He didn’t want to risk leaving Harry alone in a stranger’s house, freaking out with his eyes covered.

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s just get you sitting down first.”

Zayn’s living room looked something out of a furniture showroom; glass coffee table, fluffy carpet like walking across a polar bear’s back, television like a cinema screen. _Definitely a sex worker,_ Louis thought admiringly, and who could blame the guy, with a face like that? If God and genetics had gifted you with a face that good, you might as well use it. Wondering whether Zayn could get him a gig, something minor, like stripping, to pay off his first year of student loans, he picked his way across the room on his toes, self-conscious of his grubby spiderman socks, and pushed Harry down onto a creamy leather sofa. Then, he took the blindfold off, careful not to pull Harry’s hair as he removed it.

Harry blinked dazedly as light rushed in, squinting, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. He put a hand up to shield his eyes, then looked around the room, not quite as awed as Louis had expected. Still, Harry was rich, Louis reminded himself, he probably lived in a house far grander than this one, where you had to wear gloves to avoid getting fingerprints everywhere and hover above the sofa rather than sitting on it, so that you wouldn’t leave a dent.

“Who’s house is this?”

“Mate of mine,” said Louis, folding the blindfold around his hand so that he wouldn’t lose it. “I need you to stay here for a couple of minutes, okay?” Looking around, he spotted the TV remote and pressed it into Harry’s hand. “Watch TV or something, he probably has a shit-ton of channels. I’ll be right back.”

He had expected to feel intimidated walking upstairs alone, but there was something welcoming about the house. Perhaps it was the slight smell of smoke, very faint, not as if Zayn smoked indoors but just a background hint of it that belied the presence of a smoker in the house, a fading imprint in the air. And the house, despite its cleanliness, felt friendly to him. The stairs creaked as he ascended them, and when he peeped through into one of the bedrooms, there were clothes on the floor. Smiling to himself, he entered the bathroom.

It was like drawing in a fairytale book, outlined in gold ink. The tub was an enormous claw-foot, gleaming white, a hollow pearl awaiting them, with white towels waiting on the rail, and shiny gold taps ready to send water gushing forth. There were bottles of bubble bath lined up in a row on the edge of the tub, and a shower cubicle tucked away in the corner that Louis ignored. Setting his bag down on the floor, he turned the bath on, the water roaring in a foam like a waterfall, gushing into the bathtub. Steam was already rising in lazy swirls from the surface of the water. Louis opened up his bag and pulled out his secret weapon, a single one from the arsenal he’d been out to collect several days before, and he held it imperiously over the tub, the way Harry had during his demonstration all those weeks ago.

Then, he dropped it in.

~*~

“I really don’t see how this is necessary,” Harry complained, as Louis guided him up the stairs, one at a time.

“Trust me, it’ll be worth it,” Louis said. “Just a few more steps, now, okay?”

Grumbling, Harry took the last few steps with great caution and then shuffled down the hallway. With a hand at his back, Louis followed, an unrestrained grin spreading across his face. He pushed the bathroom door open with a creak.

It was warm in there, steam caressing their faces. Harry paused suspiciously, then inhaled. The smell coming from the bath was divine, a sharp, peppermint tang like candy canes, and there were still low popping sounds drifting from the surface.

Harry went very still. Biting his tongue, Louis removed the blindfold and allowed Harry to gape at the scene in front of him.

Explosions of colour had shot across the bath, blue and yellow fireworks, sparks of fuchsia and bubbles of emerald, hissing gently. The water danced with life, different shades shooting through the mix. Entranced, Harry drew closer and dipped a finger into the water, watching the colours draw around his hand.

He walked all around the bath, trailing a hand through the water and watching new colours rush into the current he left behind him, yellow like roses. Louis watched him in silence, taking it in. On the side of the bath, bordering the taps, he’d balanced several bubble bars, one foliage green with white daisies, one a kaleidoscope of green and pink and blue, one blue and white like a summery day. Harry picked them all up in silence and sniffed them, squeezing them slightly. Fidgeting, Louis watched him.

“I wasn’t sure what to get,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “The girl in the shop was nice, I asked her advice what to get. She told me which ones were your favourites. But I got the green one just because it made me think of you. And...the hill."

Harry’s head jerked and, to Louis’ alarm, his eyes were wet.

“Oh, God,” said Louis. “I’m sorry. I fucked up, didn’t I?”

“No,” Harry said tearfully, and he scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, still gripping the green bubble bar for dear life. “No, it’s just - it’s just - they’re so pretty I don’t want to use them!”

Louis laughed, the noise tearing out of him in a rush, and he stumbled across the room to pull Harry into a hug. Burying his nose into the crook of Harry’s shoulder, he breathed him in, the flowery washing powder warmth of him inside the peppermint, and shook his head.

“Soft arse,” he said.

“Says you,” Harry retorted, twisting to bite Louis’ neck. The pain of it zipped through him, a sharp sting that made him shiver. He could feel a little bit of saliva gleaming on his throat, and resisted the urge to reach up and touch it. “All this, just for me?”

“Yeah, well, you said you missed bath bombs, and I thought...I thought it’d be nice.”

“It is nice,” Harry said softly. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

He lowered his head to kiss Louis, once, gently. Then again. Already, Louis’ breath was quickening. He stretched up on his toes, Harry dipping his head to meet him, arms already around him. Large hands on the small of his back, keeping him steady. Harry’s excitement was infectious, he was practically vibrating, holding two of the bubble bars in one hand as the other hand stroked Louis’ back, slid up inside his shirt. His hands were a little cold, making Louis shiver, but he didn’t mind.

“Your bath’s going cold.”

“Mm.”

“Well are you going to get in it, after I went to all of this effort?”

“Mm, I don’t know, maybe I’d rather just look at it. Take a few instagram photos.”

“You’d better not,” said Louis, and he reached up and grabbed Harry’s nipple, feeling through the thin fabric of his shirt, and twisted, hard.

It was meant to be revenge, most people Louis knew would scream blue murder if he wrenched their nipple like that, but Harry just hissed sharply, his eyes drifting closed, mouth falling open. His heart hammered against Louis’ palm. Astonished, Louis let go, and when Harry opened his eyes his pupils were blown like enormous ink blots against the green of his irises. His tongue flickered out to wet his lips, already puffy from the kissing.

_Interesting,_ Louis thought, but they’d wasted too much time already. Running his fingers apologetically over the abused nipple, he said softly, “Are you getting in, then?”

“Yeah,” Harry said breathlessly, not taking his eyes off Louis. “Yeah.”

Immediately, his hands came up and he drew his shirt over his head in a motion far more graceful than Louis would have suspected he could; it fluttered to the floor, and he stood shirtless in front of Louis, his skin smooth, tattoos dark against the skin. Louis’ fingers skated over the butterfly, trailing upwards to trace over the twin birds on his chest. His gaze dropped to Harry’s nipple, and he felt an urge to kiss it, to wrap his lips around it and see what kind of noises Harry would make as his tongue laved over it… but he would control himself. He stepped back.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

Harry’s forehead furrowed, eyebrows drawing inward. “What?”

“This is your treat. I’ll go and wait downstairs.”

Harry drew closer again, closing the distance between them. He was breathing hard. In spite of himself, Louis felt his gaze flicker downwards again, settling on the line of hairs leading downwards into Harry’s jeans, begging to feel his tongue follow them down. Harry was hard, his cock pressing against the fabric, distorting it, and Louis shuddered with the urge to rub the heel of his hand over it, to feel him, hot and heady under his fingers.

“What if I don’t want you to wait?” Harry challenged. “What if I want you to come in with me?”

Louis licked his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, and he popped the button on his jeans.

Well, Louis didn’t need asking twice. His shirt hit the floor in three seconds flat, and then he had thrown himself at Harry, kissing him fiercely, hands running across his bare skin. Torn between wanting Harry to strip for him and wanting those jeans off, off, off, he slipped his hands inside them and pawed at Harry’s arse through his underwear. Harry bucked into him, gasping, and Louis kissed him again and again, his mouth travelling downwards, lingering on Harry’s neck. He ached to leave a bruise, to mark Harry as his own, but...too risky, too risky, so he moved down again, teeth scraping lightly at his nipples and then kissing them, sucking as Harry made a desperate noise and tangled his fingers in his hair. Tension was building, he was hard himself, now, almost hard enough to start grinding against Harry’s thigh and that was what stopped him, made him take a steadying breath and step back.

“Bath,” he said hoarsely.

“Right,” Harry agreed.

He pulled the zip of his jeans down with a low rasp and then peeled them off, stumbling slightly as he tried to pull the fabric away from his thighs, his calves, then he stepped out of them and stood in front of Louis in only his underwear, cock pressing against the elastic, practically begging for Louis’ mouth. It took all of Louis’ concentration to take his own jeans off, and reveal that he hadn’t bothered with underwear today at all. His fingers twitched, not sure whether he wanted to grab Harry’s cock or his own but desperate for some kind of touch, electricity sparking through him, making him shudder. He didn’t remember the last time he’d wanted someone so much, and he felt a sudden desire to force Harry onto his knees and see those pretty pink lips around the head of his dick, but not yet… Not yet.

Still watching him, Harry slid a finger into his underwear and pulled them off, fabric pooling at his feet. He was...God, huge, dick curving towards his belly, so hard it looked almost painful and Louis’ mouth watered just looking at him. Harry’s gaze followed Louis’ as his eyes travelled hungrily from his throat and all the way down.

Then, he turned his back, giving Louis a marvellous view of his pert, round arse, before he stepped into the bath and slipped into the water until only his head was visible, poking above the surface.

Louis breathed shakily out. Right. The bath.

He took his socks off, and then he was clambering clumsily into the bath himself, water slopping over the edges, trying to make himself care that he was messing up Zayn’s bathroom and if he was honest with himself, not caring in the slightest. He slid in, and nestled between Harry’s thighs, resting his head against Harry’s shoulder, Harry’s cock nudging his leg and sending a jolt of electricity through him. Harry sighed.

“This is heaven,” he said.

“Yeah,” Louis agreed, thinking less of the bath and more of Harry’s body pressed against his, his hand on Louis’ tummy, anchoring him close.

“Thank you,” said Harry.

Louis shrugged, more water overflowing. “I just wanted to make you happy. You work too hard. All work and no play…”

“Makes Harry a _very_ dull boy,” Harry breathed, and he started drawing circles on Louis’ thigh, absent-minded, soothing. If only his every touch didn’t send spikes of arousal rocketing down Louis’ spine, his cock twitching. He tried to steady his breathing.

Harry’s hand was slowly drifting lower, and at first Louis thought it was coincidental, but then Harry wrapped a hand around his dick and it felt so good that he couldn’t hold back a moan, his hips stuttering into the touch. The water was silky on his skin, Harry’s hand firm as he stroked him, pleasure sparking through him. His breath felt chilly on Louis’ neck, thanks to the warmth of the air in the bathroom.

Then he rubbed his thumb over the head of Louis’ cock, swiping straight over the slit, and Louis jolted so hard that half the water in the bathtub slopped onto the floor in a great wave. He arched his hips, swearing.

“You like that?” Harry asked.

“I like _you_ ,” Louis said honestly, “anything - fuck, anything you wanna do, God - you’re so good at this - oh fuck - ”

“You’re very sweet,” Harry breathed. “Kind of makes me curious about how you taste…”

“Oh, Jesus,” Louis whimpered, and this was not at all how he’d expected things to go, him falling apart beneath Harry’s hand, desperate, almost begging already.

“Louis,” Harry said, his tone suddenly changing.

“God - fuck - mm hm?”

“It seems such a shame to waste this very nice bath...but the thing is...I really, really want you to fuck me.”

Louis almost fell out of the bath in his haste to get out, slipping in the pool he’d left on the floor, God, they were going to have to buy Zayn a new bathroom, it had to be leaking through the ceiling to the floor below. His socks and jeans and shirt were all dripping; he didn’t even grab a towel before he started trying to fight his way into them, the denim squeaking as he forced one leg into his sopping wet jeans, cursing all the while. Still in the bath, Harry laughed, a bark of amusement at the sight of Louis fighting to get into his clothes.

He rose, water dripping from him like he was some kind of sea God, and for a moment Louis was frozen, ceasing his rolling on the floor to watch, desperation throbbing through him as, just for a moment, Harry reached down and gave himself a stroke. His eyelids fluttered closed and the moan he gave was so sinful that Louis thought he might go to hell just for hearing it. His cock throbbed.

“I really want you,” said Harry.

“I know,” said Louis, “but Christ, put some clothes on. Zayn said we could use his bathroom; he didn’t say anything about his bed.”

~*~

They staggered into Louis’ room, mouths pressed together, clothes barely on and already they were taking them off again. It had taken far too long to get back from Zayn’s house; he lived an outrageous distance from the university, and they’d had to get a bus to avoid getting pneumonia from wandering the streets in wet clothes. It was so cold that Louis was shaking, which might have quenched his arousal if Harry hadn’t kept sneakily reaching down to palm him through his jeans on the bus, leaning to whisper filth in his ear. Louis had never thought of himself as much of an exhibitionist, but something about the disapproving looks they attracted made him so fucking hard; encouraged by Harry’s antics, he whispered more filth straight back, kissed his neck, rubbed him through his jeans until he was blatantly, embarrassingly hard - and then he hissed in his ear about how filthy Harry was, how everyone could see how desperate he was, how much he wanted it, how Louis could probably get on his knees and suck him right now and Harry would fucking love it, would let the whole bus hear how much he loved it, how much he wanted Louis to make him come.

Then they’d had to get off the bus, because one particularly sharp-faced old lady looked like she might gut them with her umbrella if they carried on any further, and also because Louis was getting sorely tempted to just say fuck them all and start sucking Harry anyway, and he didn’t really want to be arrested for indecent exposure in front of a bus full of pensioners. Maybe. It was certainly fun seeing Harry get so worked up at the thought of it.

Louis threw the rest of his wet clothes onto the floor and dragged Harry into the bed, and then he slid down between his legs and started to suck his cock, tongue swirling around the head, bobbing up and down to take Harry as deep as he could, though it was no easy task, sucking off someone so big. Nevertheless, he gave it his best effort, running his tongue from the base to the tip, flicking it across the head to tease him, and then when Harry moaned his complaint, taking him as deep as he could, choking slightly. Moaning, Harry scrabbled at his shoulders, and Louis pulled off to kiss him, teasing all the way from base to tip and back down again. Hands raked through his hair, and Harry’s moans became a litany, a beautiful soundtrack that was so distracting that Louis lost himself for a moment, rubbing his cock against the sheets, rutting against the bed. Panting, he pressed harder, and then remembered himself and his fingers slipped down to press against Harry’s hole, ever so lightly.

“Fuck,” Harry swore, “Oh, shit, please - ”

“You sound so pretty,” Louis said. “Look so pretty, too.”

“Please, fuck me - ”

“Mm, you like having things inside you? Go on, tell me. I want details.”

Harry moaned again. “I like fingers. Two fingers, to start off, get me really stretched out… I always think about you, doing it to me, I have to do it twice a day, and I know I shouldn’t, I should be studying, but that just makes me want it. Sometimes I try to stop myself, and I end up - fuck - so hard, I can’t think, and then I have to go and lie on the bed and put a finger in, and I always pretend it’s you, doing it to me - ”

Louis made an approving noise, reaching into his bedside drawer for the lube, which he drizzled over his fingers, feeling it run down his wrist. He moved to pet Harry’s hole again, dipping the tip of his finger in ever so slightly, then out again. Swearing, Harry arched his back and his fist thumped against the mattress, fingers curling in the sheets.

“Can’t stop yourself, can you?” he said, moving down to kiss the tip of Harry’s cock again. “So needy for me. I’m surprised fingers are enough to satisfy you.”

“I was - uh - saving,” Harry panted. “For a vibrator. A really good one. Saved all my Lush money for it.”

Louis imagined Harry fucking himself down on a vibrator and suddenly had to touch himself, slicking the fingers of his other hand until he almost dropped the lube bottle, shoving it on the bedside table to grip himself and start sliding his hand up and down in a steady rhythm as he continued circling Harry’s hole with his finger.

“I’d like to see that,” he said. “Maybe I’ll buy you one...but only I get to decide when you use it. Only I get to see.”

“Yes,” Harry moaned. “Yes - please - oh, God, Louis, just put it in me!”

“Patience,” Louis chastised, and he slipped a finger in.

Harry’s reaction was gratifyingly immediate; he pushed against Louis’ finger with a desperate noise, one hand flying out to slap against the wall, where his fingers lay splayed out wide. It reminded Louis irresistibly of the sex scene in the Titanic, a smeary handprint on a steamed up window. Tilting his head back, Harry rutted against the bed, his hips snapping up, cock hard against his belly, and Louis dived down to take it into his mouth, starting to slowly move his finger, searching for Harry’s prostate.

There was no doubt about when he found it; Harry swore and his fingernails scraped the wall with an almost painful screech; he curled his fingers into a fist and gave the wall a thump, and Louis hoped to _God_ that Niall would have the sense not to come and investigate the noise. He swirled his tongue around the head of Harry’s cock again and slid another finger in, and then started scissoring, and for a while there was just the slick sounds of Louis’ fingers moving and Harry’s low moans every time Louis hit his prostate at just the right angle, the bed shuddering as Harry writhed. It had been too long since Louis had fingered someone and it took rather more concentration than he remembered, too much for him to be able to suck Harry off and finger him properly at the same time so he concentrated on curling his fingers and trying to get a steady pace, and enjoying the sound of Harry pleading with him, cursing, fisting the sheets. Louis himself was painfully hard, so that when he rocked a little too far forwards on his knees and his dick brushed the curve of Harry’s arse, he found himself pressing forward...and again… rocking desperately against him over and over until he was barely moving his fingers at all, just rubbing his cock against Harry, panting, desperate for more friction -

Harry seized his wrist, stopping him dead, although Louis realized with a stab of embarrassment that the only movement had been from his whole body moving as he thrusted against Harry’s arse, chasing the feeling.

“Lou,” Harry said, his voice cracking slightly. “Please…”

God. Louis took a deep breath and slid his fingers out with a wet sound, grabbing the base of his dick both to get ready to guide it in and to try and get some control over himself. Squeezing himself helped, but it also made his cock throb and for a moment he had to lower his gaze, to look down at his knees rather than at Harry, sprawled out on the bed below him, nipples hard, skin a canvas of dark ink, lips puffy and mouth open.

He pressed his cock against Harry’s hole, planning on going slowly, but Harry surged forwards and he slipped inside with shocking ease, his hips slamming against Harry’s arse within seconds, and for a moment he just knelt there, gasping, Harry’s shaking knees pressed to his sides. Licking his lips, Louis stroked up his belly, fingers trailing up his chest and his neck, Harry’s head lolling back and his eyes closing. Then, he cupped his cheek, thumb stroking across Harry’s face and leaving a wet smear from the lube. Maybe that would have embarrassed Louis another day, but Harry’s gaze only darkened, his mouth still hanging lustfully open.

Leaning forwards, Louis started to kiss him everywhere he could reach - his forehead, his cheeks, his chin and jaw and neck, mouth landing in a dozen different places, and when he reached Harry’s mouth, capturing him in a wet kiss, he drew back and thrusted very carefully forwards, not wanting to hurt him.

Apparently, he was going too slowly; Harry made an impatient noise into his mouth, seized him by the shoulders and pulled Louis closer, wrapping his legs around his back, and then Louis decided that there was no use in being gentle any more and so he started thrusting in earnest, his hips snapping, his thighs slapping against Harry’s arse with shocking loudness. Underneath him, Harry moaned and his nails raked down Louis’ back, ribbons of heat and pain that somehow only made Louis harder. Gasping, he pounded into Harry; Harry’s head hit the headboard of the bed and Louis slipped a hand behind his head to keep him from banging it with every thrust and then carried on, his hand catching the impact. Every snap of his hips made the headboard thud against the wall, the bed creaking dangerously, but by that point he was too far gone to care, just gasping against Harry’s neck, his face buried in the pillow, hearing Harry sob into his ear. Sticky with sweat and dizzy with the pleasure of it, Louis rocked into him harder and harder and he could already feel his orgasm building, that tight tension coiling.

He tried to get a hand between them to grab Harry’s cock but the angle was impossible, his wrist twisted so painfully he could barely move it, certainly couldn’t move it and keep fucking him at the same time, and when he slowed the pace of his hips, Harry whined. So Louis decided to try the next best thing and circled Harry’s nipple with his finger, and then pinched, and hard.

Yelping, Harry jerked up into him and Louis swore, one hand coming down on Harry’s bicep to hold him against the bed, keep him still, and then two or three more thrusts and he was coming, Harry’s breath hot where it hit his cheek, the orgasm exploding through him.

He was dimly aware of Harry holding him, jerking up to meet the last few stuttering thrusts, and then Louis collapsed against him with Harry’s cock hard against his belly and his head spinning.

Harry let him lie for a few seconds before he started squirming, and although Louis kind of wanted to just stay there, sleepy and heavy in his post-orgasmic bliss, he carefully pulled out and then crawled down the bed to take Harry’s cock into his mouth.

It didn’t take much, just a few strategic strokes and a swipe of his tongue across the head, and then Harry came, stuttering an apology - how cute, Louis thought, as if he’d never swallowed before. To prove a point, he swallowed it all, wiping off the smear at the corner of his mouth with his thumb and tasting it, whilst Harry watched, wide-eyed.

After that, Louis rolled onto his back and they both lay looking at the ceiling, panting. The room seemed strangely quiet with the absence of moaning or the bed slamming against the wall, and for a moment Louis felt strangely embarrassed, afraid to look at Harry. But he was no coward - or at least, he didn’t want to be - so after a moment he forced himself to turn his head.

Harry was already looking at him, his mouth still open.

Louis didn’t want to speak. For once he was enjoying the silence broken only by their ragged breathing or the creak of the bedsprings every time one of them shifted, still breathless but coming down. As the minutes passed, he felt Harry stop shaking and start to go loose against the bedsheets, the tension leaking from his shoulders. A contented sigh slipped from his mouth.

Meanwhile, Louis allowed himself to slip into a lazy kind of trance, focusing on Harry’s breathing. Several times his eyelids drooped only to flicker open again, alighting briefly on Harry’s face; the slope of his nose, the gentle curve of his lips, the shine of sweat on his skin. But he was so wrung out that his vision began to go hazy as though he were looking at Harry from underwater, until his face was just a blur of colours - sunset pink, where he knew Harry’s lips were, and the forest greens and browns of his eyes and hair. He could feel tiredness lapping at him, a tide of exhaustion gently pulling him under, and eventually he gave in and allowed his eyelids to flutter closed.

~*~

When he awoke again, it was with a rush of confusion. There were familiar bedsprings poking him in the back, and when he forced open his gummy eyelids, he recognised the faded wash of red and blue that was his spiderman duvet, swimming through his sleep-smeared vision - but that did not solve the pressing question of who the fuck had he wrapped himself around like an octopus?

Stretching slightly, Louis grimaced, suddenly becoming aware of an unpleasant dampness on his leg and the stickiness of his fingers, which he tried to wipe off on the duvet with little success. He had his cold nose buried in some stranger’s warm shoulder; the stranger - and Louis himself - smelt sweaty, but the other person’s skin also smelt slightly minty, not quite the sharp tang of toothpaste but something slightly more muted, like after eights. And, Louis noticed as he struggled to focus past the muggy haze of half-asleep, they had glitter on their neck.

Oh, he realized. Harry. Of course.

He would have liked to stay there in the warmth - in spite of the slightly sweaty smell, Harry made a good pillow and Louis was relishing the rare opportunity to be the big spoon - but he realized pretty quickly that he had been awoken not by divine intervention, but by the urgent need to piss, so with a sigh, he tried to detach their bodies. Unfortunately, they’d fallen asleep sweaty and sticky and therefore attempting to pull away produced an agonising tearing sensation like trying to peel sweat-tacky thighs off a leather chair in summer. Hissing, Louis wrenched himself free, possibly leaving behind several layers of skin in the process, and slipped out of bed. Still basking in their warmth, Harry whined a complaint and then hunched further in on himself, snuggling back under the duvet until he resembled nothing more than a massive lump underneath the covers.

Shivering, Louis darted into the bathroom to take care of business and grabbed a handful of toilet paper while he was at it. He suspected he was going to need someone to help him do his laundry later on.

When he stepped back into the bedroom, Harry had propped himself up and was watching him with a smile, the duvet pulled up to his neck, hands clasped in his lap. There was something frighteningly domestic about it, as if he was bringing Harry breakfast in bed and was about to whip a laden tray out from behind his back, with a full English breakfast and a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice teetering on the edge. Except anyone who knew Louis knew that the idea of him waking up early enough to make anyone breakfast was laughable.

“Hey,” Louis said softly. Then, he held up the mangled wad of toilet paper. “Thought you might be needing this.”

A brilliant grin spread across Harry’s face, and he stretched out to snag the paper, his hand disappearing beneath the duvet to wipe away at the mess on his thighs. “Yeah, thanks. We made a bit of a mess.”

“That we did,” Louis agreed. “I have a cute date idea for you later - you can teach me how to use the washing machine. And how to tell the difference between the washing machine and the tumble dryer.”

“Romantic,” Harry said, the grin never leaving his face for a second.

He reached out and snagged Louis, pulling him back down onto the bed; Louis squealed as he landed on the wet patch and Harry roared with laughter, pinning him down against the sticky mess. Flailing, Louis screeched and hit and tried to scratch, while Harry gleefully rubbed his bare skin against the tacky mess of come on the sheets. Eventually, Louis gave up trying to fight and went limp; Harry loosened his grip and Louis yelled in triumph, swiping his hand through the mess and smudging it across Harry’s face, getting more on his fingers than Harry’s cheeks, since it was too dry to smear properly. Nevertheless, it was satisfying, as revenge went, and resulted in a rather giggly bout of naked wrestling from which they resurfaced, exhausted again, panting, with a bit more sweat in the mix. Louis decided he had won; Harry might have been taller, stronger, and overall more lanky, making him difficult to pin - but he was also a massive softy, more interested in kissing than winning. Hence, Louis’ victory.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” Harry said, lying with his head on Louis’ chest.

They stared at the cracks in the ceiling, roaming across the paint like roads worn away by hundreds of travelling feet on snow, pathways on a map, traipsing across the expanse of white. It looked so fragile, and so close, that Louis thought if he reached up and tapped the ceiling with one finger, the whole thing would shatter and a whole new world would crash down upon their heads.

“Maybe we should,” he said.

And the dusk licked at the edges of his curtains and sent shadows dancing around the fringes of the room, and Louis was content.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that's all the Zayn you're getting in this fic. Sorry.


	14. Chapter 14

Louis was blasted awake by a sound like the end of the world.

Yelling, he shot upright, clutching the duvet to his chest. The cacophany raged around him; it was like the worst parts of an air raid siren, an ambulance, and a screaming baby, all rolled into one. Above his head, red lights flashed spasmodically. Frozen, Louis sat and looked around in utter bewilderment as the noise chiselled at his brain and eardrums, and then Niall erupted through the wardrobe, bellowing. He stood at the foot of Louis' bed, bare chested and wearing a pair of blue pyjama bottoms with Bart Simpson's head printed all over them.

"What the fuck?"

"What's happening?" Louis shouted.

"I think it's the fire alarm!"

"Fire alarm? At two in the morning?" 

"Fire doesn't have a curfew, idiot! Get up!"

"I've got no clothes on!"

"You don't need clothes, shift your arse!" said Niall, hauling him out of bed.

They emerged into the corridor, which churned with people in various states of undress. Louis was by no means the oddest of the bunch, dragged along by the elbow in his grotty spiderman boxers; he spotted someone in a set of hair curlers the size of rolling pins, someone lugging a teddy bear down the corridor, and a few girls in see-through nighties before they burst into the car park. Louis hissed as his bare feet touched the frozen pavement.

"Fuck me, that's cold!"

"Hurry up, you twat," said Niall, steering him away from the building.

Louis' entire body felt like one enormous goosebump. Arms wrapped around himself, he stood shivering as more and more people gathered. Several people pointed and laughed at him. Louis was too cold to care. He scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces, and saw flashes of people he recognised; the coke-snorters from down the hall; the girl with the plushies, wearing a raunchy negligee; then, looking around and chewing on his bottom lip, Harry. Either he’d gone to sleep fully clothed, or he’d been sensible enough to get dressed before walking out, but he was wearing his trench coat and - Louis closed his eyes with longing - a pair of glittery gold boots. God, what wouldn’t Louis have given at that moment for a pair of shoes? There were little stones digging into his feet, clinging to the soles, and they were so cold that it felt like they were being crushed. He opened his eyes again, and waited for Harry to look his way.

They made eye contact; immediately, Harry’s shoulders loosened. Louis could practically see his sigh of relief from all the way on the other side of the car park. He nodded; Harry gave a slow blink in return, like a cat, and then turned away. Louis forced himself not to stare at the smooth silhouette of Harry’s face, the elegant slope of his nose illuminated by the streetlights, and looked away just as Jesy shuffled over to them, fuzzy slippers slapping on the concrete, looking enviably cosy in a fluffy dressing gown. Her hair was tied up in what had presumably been a messy bun, but was rapidly collapsing into just a plain mess, and she had blurry make-up circles around her eyes.

"Fucking ridiculous, this," she said, folding her arms. She looked Louis up and down. "Someone dressed for the weather, I see."

Louis tried to think of a retort, but ended up shivering instead. He stared lustfully at Jesy's dressing gown.

"Here," she said, taking it off and slipping it around his shoulders. "You look like a snowman."

For the sake of chivalry, he probably ought to have refused it, but Jesy was wearing a pair of flannel pyjamas underneath the gown and Louis was only a few scraps of red and blue fabric away from public indecency. He pulled it around him gratefully. Niall looked sour that she hadn’t given it to him instead, but, Louis thought, at least he had proper pants on.

They stood shivering on the pavement for what seemed like forever. Gloomily, Louis stared at his toes, which were turning a worrying purplish colour.

Niall was staring at the flat. "Where's this fire? There isn't one, is there? Alright, which one of you idiots burnt your toast at two in the fecking morning?" he roared at the assembled crowd.

"I think it's a drill," said Jesy.

"A fire drill? At two in the morning?"

"Fire doesn't have a curfew, remember?" Louis said snippily.

"Aren't they supposed to warn us when we're having a fire drill?"

"I dunno about you, but if I'd known this was coming I'd have stayed in bed, come hell or high water. I can see my breath, look." 

"I'm starting to wish there actually was a fire," Niall said bitterly. "At least we'd be a bit fucking warmer."

"Oh, don't," said Jesy, but Louis laughed. Cold as he was, that was the kind of joke he could get behind.

"This is all Liam's fault," Niall continued, "tempting fate with that bloody fireman costume on Halloween.”

“I swear we’ve been out here about forty minutes; I’m going to go and find out what’s going on,” said Jesy, and she yanked her top down so that the tops of her boobs were showing, two round crescents like full moons, and flopped towards the building

“She means she’s gonna try and flirt her way past the guys who are stopping us getting back in,” said Niall. “I’d better go with her, it’s that cold out here she might decide to shag one of them for warmth…”

He hurried after her, and Louis took the opportunity to sidle over to where Harry stood, wincing as the cold and the stones hurt his feet. As he picked his way through the crowd, keeping a sharp eye out for broken glass, he felt a sudden urge to run over and put his arms around Harry, to hold him. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t thought more of the alarms, that he hadn’t worried, as Harry had, that it might be real, that he might be left behind. Standing beside Harry, he sneaked a look at him. Although obviously aware of his presence, Harry continued to stare at a wilting bush several metres away, as if expecting something to pop out of it.

“I like your dressing gown,” he said. 

“It’s Jesy’s,” Louis said grumpily. “And we don’t all sleep with our clothes on, freak.”

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I was working. Anyway, it’s probably a good thing I did, ‘cos I sleep naked.”

Hm. That would usually have been a welcome image, but not when he was wearing an ill-fitting pink dressing gown belonging to someone else; with horror, Louis imagined his dick peeping out from between the folds of the gown like an inquisitive animal and willed it down. If anything could make this worse, it would be Harry seeing his dick like that, horribly diminished by the cold and sticking out through the front of Jesy’s dressing gown. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Harry said softly

Louis glanced at him again. He wished Harry would look at him.

“Yeah, well, it’s only a false alarm, innit? Woke us all up for nothing. Must be someone playing pranks. If we find out who it was, remind me that I owe them a punch in the face; my idea of a funny joke does not involve anyone having to stand barefoot in a car park at two in the morning wearing only a pair of Spiderman undies. Especially if they aren’t drunk.”

“I don’t know,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I don’t know if it was a practical joke. I’ve an alarm right outside my room, one of those ones where you break the glass to set it off. The glass was broken, but I didn’t hear anyone outside before it happened - and I’m a light sleeper; you’d have thought I would have heard something. Drunk people laughing, maybe. Sober people don’t tend to think it’s funny, setting off fire alarms, unless they’re fifteen and an idiot. Especially since it means you also have to stand around in the cold for God knows how long.”

“Well what other explanation do you have? And if it’s a drill, why would they break the glass? Surely there are other ways to set the alarm off.”

“Mm,” said Harry. “Maybe - ”

“Oi, Louis!”

Niall and Jesy had returned, this time with Perrie in tow, looking very cute in a pair of Tinkerbell pyjamas. 

“Doesn’t look like those tossers are letting anybody back in the building any time soon, so we’re gonna go down the pub. Are you coming?”

“I don’t have any money,” said Louis.

“Perrie picked up her purse before she came out. Risked her life for three pound fifty and a used bus ticket.”

Perrie gave her the finger. 

For a moment, Louis considered. At that time of night, the pub might not even have been open, and he didn’t much fancy traipsing barefoot down the street in a pink dressing gown to a pub that he might not even be able to get into. But the idea of sitting down and getting pissed in a warm, if grotty building sounded far more attractive than hanging around in a car park waiting to get back inside - and besides which, he needed a wee. 

“I’m in.”

“Good,” said Jesy. “Let me find Jade and Leigh-Anne, and we’ll go.”

Just then, Louis looked at Harry. He’d moved away slightly when the others turned up, and was stood forlornly beneath a lamp-post, hands in his pockets, the shadows and orange light turning him into a jack-o’-lanturn.

“Er,” Louis said. “Guys, shouldn’t we...shouldn’t we invite everyone else? I mean, we’re not the only ones freezing our balls, tits, and other extremities off in this godforsaken car park.”

“Babe,” Perrie said, “do I look like I’m made of money? I’ve got twenty-five quid in cash, a debit card with three pound fifty on it and a button that looks a bit like Hilary Clinton. None of the rest of these suckers are gonna cough up; nobody else has got any cash on them. I don’t mind buying drinks for all you lot, cos I know I’ll get it back, but if we invite anyone else I’ll be buying the whole university a round.”

“Right,” Louis said. He cast an apologetic look at Harry, who was picking at his nail polish and pretending that he wasn’t listening.

“Alright, fuckers, let’s move,” said Jesy, hauling Jade and Leigh-Anne through the crowd. Jade was wearing a teddy-bear onesie; Leigh-Anne, an enormous shirt that Louis thought bore a striking resemblance to a tent. 

The pub was only around the corner, but to Louis’ frozen, bleeding feet it felt more like a two hour walk than a two minute one. Luckily, as they rounded the corner, they all let out a ragged cheer; the lights were still on. Perrie and Jesy ran ahead, Jesy flopping like a penguin in her slippers, Perrie light-footed in shabby trainers. The rest of them lagged behind, and Louis brought up the rear, limping pathetically.

They all sat down, and Perrie went to the bar for shots. All of a sudden, Louis’ whole body seemed to remember that it was edging towards 3am. He collapsed like jelly into a chair, slumped over the table and barely had the energy to knock back the smirnoff shot Perrie thrust into his hand. It radiated through him, shockingly warm like a blow to the chest, but strangely pleasant. His hands stopped shaking quite as badly.

After another hour and a sorely depleted wallet, Louis was pleasantly buzzed, enough that his feet were tingly rather than sore and the warmth in his chest had spread through the rest of him like a hug. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d left Harry standing under that lamp post on his own while he toddled off for a drink with his mates. But what else could he have done, without giving the game away? Under sufferance, Perrie might have bought Harry a drink, but it would have been difficult to explain why Louis wanted him there, now that they all thought he was over Harry and head over heels for a hot stripper. Massaging his temples, Louis grimaced. The pleasant buzz was starting to become irritating; his brain felt like marshmallows, sticky and pliant. If someone poked him, his head might cave in. 

“Cheer up, babe,” said Perrie, putting her arm around him. “It might never happen.”

Louis only grunted. With his head this fuzzy, his tongue might loosen if he said anything more than that.

The time was creeping towards half four, and the bartender was starting to get fidgety, looking at the clock with decreasing levels of subtlety. Every now and then, she would march over to their table and begin wiping it aggressively, straightening the beermats as though they had already left. Eventually, Perrie looked into her wallet, which now contained two pounds fifty, a button that looked like Hilary Clinton, and the bartender’s number, and sighed.

“Right, it’s almost half four, that girl’s never gonna ask me on a date if we don’t fuck off, and they must have started letting people back into the flat by now. Let’s move.”   
“I can’t,” said Louis dramatically. “I can’t go on. You’ll have to carry me.”

“There’s a bench outside you can kip on, if you want, but I ain’t carrying you,” said Niall. 

“You’re all terrible friends.”

“But you love us anyway.”

“Fuck off, I’m a great friend, I bought you tequila at two in the morning!” said Perrie.

Even Louis couldn’t argue with that.

“Whoever set that fire alarm off is going to pay for my chiropodist when all this wandering around fucks up my feet,” he grumbled.

“Whoever set that fire alarm off is going to have enough trouble sorting out their own medical treatment, after I fucking strangle them,” Perrie said. “Now quit whinging and move.”

And which that, they all traipsed off back to the flat.

~*~

The alarm woke Louis up at half ten. Groaning, he hit snooze.

It went off again ten minutes later. After whacking snooze three more times, Louis hurled the phone across the room, then lurched out of bed, eyes heavy with sleep, to retrieve it. He fumbled with it for a minute or two and eventually turned off all of his alarms for the week, flopping with a groan onto the bed.

He was fuzzy with sleep and a little hungover, but thankfully it was the kind of hangover that demanded feeding, not the kind where his stomach rebelled and turned itself inside out. Louis was in the mood for bacon, and luckily for him, Niall was a bacon prodigy. He had the knack of making the perfect kind of bacon for the occasion - orgasmically crispy when you weren't hungover, and swimming in grease when you were. The revitalising properties of greasy bacon for a hangover were a mystery to Louis, but they never failed.

Louis threw his silenced phone onto the bed and stretched. After the fire alarm the night before, he'd got dressed before daring to go back to bed, and he'd fallen asleep in tight black jeans, the fluffiest pair of socks he owned, his shoes sticking over the end of the bed, and his ankles now had red ridges on them from where they'd rested against the wood. Rumpling his hair, he shoved his way into the wardrobe.

It was stuffy in there, noticeably more so than usual. Louis frowned, reached out to sweep the rest of his clothes out of the way, and his fingers brushed smooth, unyielding wood.

Perplexed, he pushed against it. It creaked slightly, but held.

"Eh?" said Louis.

He rapped on the wood, and it made a hollow sound, reverberating slightly through his knuckles.

Louis backed out of the wardrobe, one hand to his head. He was beginning to get a nasty sinking feeling in his stomach, like something heavy had been dropped in there.

It felt strange, walking round to knock on Niall's door rather than just bursting in through the wardrobe. He had to bang pretty hard, hollering, "Niall!"

The door was wrenched open. "What?" Niall demanded, poking his head out, hair standing on end. He was still wearing his Simpsons pyjama bottoms, the hems rather grubby from wandering around in them all night. Brave man. "And since when did you use the front door?"

"I can't get through the wardrobe."

"What?"

"I can't get through; it's been blocked off."

"Eh?"

Niall blinked at him, forehead furrowed.  Louis wondered if he had looked quite that dim-witted when he'd tried to get through the wardrobe himself.

“Someone’s blocked off the passageways between the wardrobes,” he said. “It’s been boarded up.”

“Are you still drunk?”

“No,” Louis said impatiently.

“So what you’re saying is, you’re not drunk, and in the space of a few hours, the wardrobe fairies have come and boarded up the walls between our wardrobes without either of us noticing?” Niall said, dripping sarcasm like dirty water. “That sounds plausible. You do remember last night, don’t you? When the fire alarm went off, and I came through the wardrobe to get you?”

“Yeah,” Louis said through gritted teeth, “I remember, but I’m telling you, I can’t get through.”

“Right,” Niall said, vanishing back into his room. Louis followed.

Marching over to the wardrobe, Niall threw both doors wide open with a flourish. Then, he stepped into the wardrobe, and immediately banged his head. A thud emanated from the wardrobe, and cursing from Niall. Louis folded his arms and tried not to look smug.

“Fuck! Fuck, ow,” Niall said, staggering out of the wardrobe, clutching his head. Then, “what the fuck?”

“Right!”

“Last night did happen, didn’t it? Fire alarm went off at the arse-crack of dawn, we all stood outside in our jammies - ”

“You dragged me out in my boxers and I had to borrow Jesy’s dressing gown, yeah. Did someone spike our drinks? How the fuck did we not notice some fucker boarding up the wardrobe?”

“Never mind that,  _ why _ did they board up our wardrobe? Did you check anyone else’s?”

“No,” said Louis, who already had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Immediately, Niall barged into the opposite wardrobe and knocked. It made a hollow sound beneath his fist. 

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, back into your room - ”

They tried climbing through to Jesy’s room, only to find it similarly boarded up. Incensed, Louis pounded on the plasterboard, hurting his knuckles.

“Jesy! Oi, Jesy!”

“What?” yelled Jesy. “I’m not naked, just come in, it doesn’t normally bother you - ”

“We can’t get through, it’s been blocked off.”

“What?” 

There was some scraping as she pushed her coat-hangers aside, then a muffled bang, and an “Ow. What the fuck?”

“Exactly!” yelled Louis. “What the fuck?”

Pouring out into the corridor, they began banging on doors, frantically trying to establish whether anyone still had an intact passageway between any of their wardrobes. By the time they’d disturbed almost everyone in the building, it became clear that no one had escaped - every single wardrobe had been boarded up. The corridor churned with bodies, everyone arguing, yelling, accusing, a few people shoving each other. It was chaos, and all Louis could do was scan the many faces pushing past him and keep an eye out for Harry. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to see him or not.

“All right,” Niall bellowed, silencing the whole corridor, “who the fuck’s the rat?”

“What?” said Louis.

“This didn’t just happen by chance. The university didn’t just psychically pick up on all our secret passageways between the wardrobes; someone must have told them, and someone must have let them in. So who the fuck did it?”

There was a nasty silence. Niall glared at everyone in turn, hands on his hips. His gaze settled on Perrie, just for a second, and she puffed up, clearly unimpressed.

“Don’t look at me! Why the fuck are you looking at me?”

“I’m not looking at you. Why, have you got something to hide? You’re always bringing people in; boys, girls. Who’s to say you didn’t let something slip?”

“Fuck you, Niall. How do we know it wasn’t you?”

“ _ Me _ ?” Niall yelped. “Why the fuck would I do it? I use those passages more than anyone. Why the fuck would I snitch and get rid of the only decent thing about these piece of shit dorm rooms?”

“Louis uses those passageways more than you do,” said Perrie, “and you never shut your gob, how do we know  _ you  _ didn’t let something slip?”

Louis tried to melt into the wall, ears burning, before anybody started asking questions about  _ why  _ he used them so much.

“All right, all right, everybody shut up!” yelled Liam.

Predictably, several people, including Perrie, yelled “ _ you _ shut up!” For once, Louis didn’t join in.

“Look,” said Liam, “we can argue about this all we want, but that doesn’t bring the passages back. Find the rat, don’t find the rat, who cares, at the moment, the main thing is to get the wardrobes up and running again.”

“What are you on about?” Niall asked disgustedly.

“Think about it,” Liam said patiently. “The people who built this shit-hole didn’t build it with passages through the walls. They built it cheap, they built it shitty, but they didn’t build it with holes in the wardrobes. The whole point is that the back of the wardrobes were made of plasterboard, and the students who lived here before us cut holes in them so people could get through. So that’s all we’ve got to do. It’s a bit of wood, not concrete, and shitty wood at that. It won’t take a lot to break through it and make the way through clear again. So the real question is, has anybody got a saw?”

They all looked blankly at him. Liam sighed.

“I’ll take that as a no. It’s okay; I can borrow a saw from the engineering department. We can fix this back up again, and then we’ll look at figuring out who got the wardrobes boarded up in the first place.”

“I don’t care who; I wanna know how,” said Jesy. “How the fuck did someone manage to sneak in here, board up every single wardrobe and leave without anybody noticing?”

“The fire drill,” Louis said quietly.

Heads swivelled towards him.

“The fire drill,” he repeated. “That wasn’t someone pissing about, or burning toast, or the university setting it off as a drill without telling us. They used the fire drill as a distraction, to make sure every single one of us would leave the building. They stopped us from getting back in while they boarded everything up, and they kept the alarms ringing so we wouldn’t hear the noise of them building it all up. They used the fucking fire drill…”

There was a heavy silence. Niall broke it. Louis had never seen Niall truly angry before; he’d seen him annoyed, embarrassed, pissed off, just plain pissed, but he’d never seen this. His eyes glinted dangerously, his bed-head looking rakish rather than comical, and his cheeks were stained the colour of wine in church.

“Right,” he said. “We’ll get the saws, we’ll get these passageways back where they belong, and then we’re gonna find out who the fuck snitched. And their life isn’t gonna be worth living.”

~*~

Louis sat hunched on his bed with his thumb hovering over the speed dial on his phone.

They’d been working on restoring the passageways for almost three hours now, and were about halfway down the building. It was taken longer than expected, but it helped that everyone was pitching in. Liam hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring more than one saw, but they found that the most time-consuming part of the process wasn’t hacking through the plasterboard - which was cheap, like cutting through a cork, once you’d managed to get a steady rhythm going - but clearing away all the sawdust and debris. They all took turns with the saw, fiendish in their determination; Louis had just handed the saw over to the girl with the plushies, who he had expected to be glad about the new developments. After all, she was fed up of him trampling all over her stuff. But apparently she wasn’t bitter enough to keep from helping; they were unanimous in their determination, to restore the wardrobes. For some of them, Louis thought, it was rebellion for the sake of it. For Niall, it seemed to be something more; he stormed up and down, scowling at everyone and snapping whenever he thought they weren’t going fast enough. More than once, Louis had been tempted to throw the saw at him.

His hands glowed from gripping the handle so tight; he’d cried off for a break, claiming to be tired, and he was now hunched over the bed with a knot of anxiety being pulled ever tighter in his stomach. Distantly, he could hear the sounds of banging and chatter down the hallway as people continued to dismantle the boards.

He hit the button.

Harry answered on the third ring. “Hi, what’s up?”

“I have to ask you something,” said Louis, “and I need you to be completely honest with me, okay? I swear I won’t be mad at you, Harry, but I need to know.”

“Louis? What’s going on? Is everything okay? Are you hurt?” Harry asked, and Louis could practically feel his anxiety leaking through the phone.

“I’m fine - just promise me.”

“I promise, Louis, what’s going on?”

“Did you tell Mike about me coming through the wardrobe?”

“What? No!”

“Are you sure? Because I won’t be mad at you, Harry, but I need to know. Did you tell him?”

“Why would I? You coming through that wardrobe is the only thing that’s been keeping me sane these past few weeks; you know that!”

“I know,” Louis said, taking a deep breath. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“What’s this all about?”

“The wardrobes have been boarded up. Not just mine, not just yours - everyone’s. The entire building. That whole fire drill was a distraction to keep us out of the building while they blocked it all off.”

“Shit,” Harry said, and Louis heard a creak as he sat down on the bed. “Shit.”

“Niall’s on the warpath. He takes this shit really seriously, he’s taking it as a personal insult. You need to be really careful, Harry, I’ve never seen Niall look like that before. You need to stay out of his way until all of this blows over.”

“I didn’t do it!” 

“Shh!” Louis said hastily. “I know, babe, I know, I believe you. But no one else is going to see it that way. Look at it from their point of view, Harry. As far as anybody else knows, you don't use those passageways at all. You don't do anything illegal, you don't have any friends in the building, nobody knows about us, except maybe that girl with the plushies who lives in the room next to yours, because she must have figured out by know why I keep nipping through her room, but that's not the point. As far as anyone else knows, you have nothing to lose from getting those wardrobes boarded up, and everything to gain. People stop bursting into your room with bags full of weed, you get a quieter life. There's nobody out there who'll vouch for you, except me, and I don't think you want me to out our entire relationship over something like this."   


"No," Harry said softly.   


"The fact is, if this gets pinned on you, Niall's not going to forget about it. He's my best friend; if I don't take his side, everyone, including him, is going to want to know why. And I don't want to treat you like shit in public just so people don't find out about us, okay? So just...be careful, okay?"   
"Okay," Harry said quietly.   
  
There was a moment of quiet, as words surged up in his throat that he had been feeling beginning to brim over for a while, but never before had he felt such a burning urge to say them. It was like a physical pain; they stuck in his throat with sharp little barbed edges, hooks that held them there, fluttering fearfully. It wasn't at all the way they ought to be said - Harry deserved whispers in the ear under cover of darkness, words spoken into the crook of his neck, kissed along his wrist, pressed into all his secret places. He deserved rose petals and soppy ballads and poetry and for Louis to shout the words through a megaphone for the whole world to hear, but their relationship had never been of that sort. It had always been brushing past each other in the hallways, exchanging contact out of the corner of their eyes, firing off secret texts and sneaking off for a moment to touch under the stars, where only the moon could see Louis' fingers dancing across Harry's skin.   
  
"I love you," he said.

He heard Harry’s sharp intake of breath, a hiss like he had touched something hot. Immediately, Louis wished he hadn’t said it; he always did this, pushed people too far, pushed them off a proverbial cliff and then hated himself for ruining things. Like a clumsy child playing with a delicate ornament, he dropped it and squeezed it and mauled it and then wondered why it had so many cracks, got confused as to how he had broken it. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he groaned and resisted the urge to start banging his head on the wall.

“I love you too,” said Harry, and then he put the phone down and Louis was left with the emptiness of the quiet and his heart racing like it might grow wings and take flight, soar out through the window and fly into Harry’s hands, returning to the one person who truly owned it, now and forever.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was about to start posting this when I realised with horror that there was actually a gap in this chapter. I write out of chronology and if I'm struggling with a scene, I skip over it and go back later to fill in the gaps - only apparently I missed one. I didn't want to do a late update so I just sort of patched over it, I hope it isn't too obvious!
> 
> Happy reading!

The events of that night finally spurred Louis into action; if he was the horse, then his confession of his love for Harry was the jockey and the plasterboard between the wardrobes was the whip. He didn’t want to lie any more. That weed was still hiding under Harry’s bathroom floor and he had no idea; Louis was beginning to have awful visions of sniffer dogs and swat teams bursting into Harry’s room and unearthing the stash of weed Louis had hidden there, and in his head there were about fifty bags of weed as opposed to the original five. These waking nightmares were silly and paranoid, but that didn't stop them from preying on his mind, hooking their claws into his every waking moment. All he could focus on was the look on Harry's (imaginary) face when he realized that Louis had lied to him from the beginning. They lied to everyone else; they were honest with each other. That was how it had worked from the beginning. Except that it hadn't.

And if Louis was being perfectly honest with _himself_ , he had other reasons for retrieving the weed. Niall was warning him against it, now that there were “spies in our midst”, as he put it - but Louis felt he had earned the right to get a little high. A few nights before, he’d turned in an essay worth ten per cent of his degree, the first one all year that he hadn't written whilst drunk, hungover, or in an exhausted fug at 2am. The first piece of work he’d turned in all year that he could actually be proud of. He couldn't wait to see the look on his lecturer’s face when he handed the paper back, to see the look of disappointment replaced by pleasure. He even dared to fantasise about a bright, shiny A dancing across the top of the paper.

It was the thought of that, smoking weed and watching the words he'd painstakingly typed swim around the page, which he kept firmly in his head as he slipped out of the wardrobe and into Harry’s room. Hesitating, he paused to listen. For a moment he strained his ears; he thought he’d heard something, like a rustle or a creak. Apart from cars rushing by, his own nervous breathing, and the low hum of the central heating, there was nothing. Shaking his head, Louis slipped into the bathroom.

The last time he had been in here to hide his weed, he’d been fuzzy drunk and a little bit high as well. This meant that he had to stamp around trying to find the dodgy board like a bird trying to trick worms to the surface. Agitated - he didn’t want Harry to come back and find him hopping around the bathroom - he gave a particularly hard stamp and his foot almost went through the floor as the loose board came flying up with a bang, and his ankle sunk into the space beneath. The weed stopped him from hurting himself seriously, but he still grazed his ankle as he pulled it free.

He pulled the weed out so fast he almost tore the bags, piling them up on the floor to count them, as if Harry might have found them and hidden one, just to fuck with him. Gathering them up in his arms, he kicked open the bathroom door and was about to vanish back through the wardrobe when a voice behind him said “Going somewhere?” 

Louis whirled around, dropping a couple of bags of weed in his shock. Mike was standing in front of the opposite wardrobe with his hands on his hips, looking like Louis’ mother when she caught him trying to sneak out through the window after she’d grounded him. Frozen, Louis just stood and stared. In all of his most horrific imaginings, he’d never pictured this. Caught red-handed by Mike Wilmslow, university lecturer, his secret boyfriend’s parents’ best friend. The person who in all the world would be the most likely to rat on him. Louis felt as though he’d been hit over the head with a sledgehammer.

“Caught in the act,” Mike said smoothly. “I didn’t expect you back so soon; I thought boarding up the wardrobes would deter you for a little longer than this. You’re more resourceful than I gave you credit for. I knew you were determined, but I have to say I'm impressed. Still, I never factored drugs into the equation. I take it Harry doesn't know about that part?”

Too stunned to speak, Louis just stood and stared at him. More weed tumbled to the ground; he let it fall. This was it. He was fucked. Caught red handed with a shit tonne of weed in someone else’s bedroom. He was surprised the police hadn't slapped him in a pair of handcuffs already. Mike had that shark-like look again, eyes cold and calculating.

“Harry had nothing to do with it,” he blurted. “I’ve been hiding it under the floorboards - he doesn't know.”

“Oh, I’m sure he doesn't. Harry’s a good kid; he’d never get mixed up in that kind of thing. But now I know - you’ve been using his bathroom as a drug den. Clever of you, planting the evidence on someone else. And there's me thinking you just wanted to shag him.”

“What?” 

“Oh, come on, don't play the innocent with me. You might have fooled Harry with those big blue eyes and the soft voice, but I'm a lot older and wiser than Harry, and not half as romantic. I knew you were up to something, I just wasn't quite so sure what.”

“You don't understand,” said Louis. “I love him.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Mike said coldly. “You think you can play games with his head just like you're playing games with mine, but I'm a lot bigger and a lot uglier than him and nowhere near as kind, and I just caught you with so much weed it’d knock out an elephant if you could persuade one to smoke it. So if I were you I'd shut up and listen, because you're in a hell of a lot of hot water,  sunshine.”

Louis did something he'd done maybe twice before in his life, and shut up. The knot in his stomach was tied to an anchor, dragging him down, the ropes coiling round him and constricting him, like a snake. He was a sinking ship and Mike was the shark, circling the wreckage, waiting for it to go down so he could break Louis open and feast on his insides.

“So here’s what we're going to do,” said Mike. “I’m going to make you a deal. I let you walk out of here, scot free. You even get to keep your little baggies of cannabis, because there must be a hell of a lot of weed there and I'd hate you to lose the investment. I keep my mouth shut - Harry, the university, your parents,  no one finds out about this. It’ll be our little secret.”

“What’s the catch?” 

“You don't see him again.” Mike’s eyes were like spearheads, digging right into him. “You cut off all contact. You don't speak to him, you don't see him, you don't even look at him. You leave him be, because you've had your fun, and I'm sure it all seemed like a great little game to you, but Harry latches on to people. You don't just get to drop in and out of his life like a yo-yo. Once you're part of him he can't let you go and I won't have you destroy him like that, because he's better than you. I’m sure you've realized that by now. He's going to make something of himself and never look back and I'll be damned if I let you get in his way.”

“You know, I had a geography teacher once. You remind me of him. He said to me once, ‘Louis, you’ll never amount to anything.’ And I hated him, and I believed him, because I thought I was shit and I didn't deserve his respect and I let him chew me up and spit me out, and I let him shit all over me when he was done, but you know the best part? Now I know that I'm worth ten of him, and I'm going to make something of myself rather than waste my life bullying schoolkids like he did. I'm worth ten of him, and I'm worth ten of you, and I'm going to say the same to you that I did to him: fuck off. You don't scare me. You’re just another bully and you don't scare me.”

"How inspirational," said Mike. "Do you rehearse that in front of a mirror at night?"

Louis just stood and glared at him, wishing he was tall enough to look him in the eye.

"You've got guts, I'll say that about you. But the thing is, Louis, that you seem to be under the impression that you matter to me personally - but the thing is, you don't. I don't care about you. You can go out there and get your little degree, prove your point, whatever it is you're so desperate to do. That's fine by me. But you leave Harry out of it. He's got prospects, opportunities, he's a hard worker. One day he's going to have a stable career, a family, financial stability, and you're going to be some grubby little starving actor, living in a draughty loft conversion and burning your diploma piece by piece to keep warm, because you can't afford central heating."

"You don't care about him at all, do you?" Louis realized. "Have you ever actually spoken to him and realized he doesn't  _ want  _ to be a lawyer? He thinks he does, because he's had it shoved down his throat his whole life, but he doesn't care about the law. He just feels like he ought to."

"The world doesn't have room for everyone to do what they want," Mike said coldly. "Now peel your ears back and listen, because what I'm saying doesn't appear to be registering very clearly. I could make your life very unpleasant if I wanted to. I could...but I won't. You get your mucky fingers out of Harry's life and this is the last you'll hear from me, which I'm sure would make us both extremely happy. I might even be able to put in a good word for you with a few professors, a few contacts, get you some work experience. You want theatre, you want television, you want film, I can pull a few strings. But you leave Harry alone. That's the deal."

"Fuck you," said Louis. "I don't need your help. I don't want it, either. And I'll do what I like. Until Harry tells me to go, I'm staying put."

"You're making a big mistake."

"I've made a lot of those. I'm still muddling along." Louis dropped to the floor, eyes still on Mike, and picked up the rest of the weed. He hoped it wasn't obvious that his hands were shaking.

There was a moment of silence. He waited for Mike to say something else, to threaten him, to offer more bribes - perhaps money; Louis wasn't sure if his pride would stand to accept a cash bribe, but if he could cajole a fistful of notes out of this prick and take Harry on a nice date with it afterwards, just to spite him, well. He wasn't above such things. But Mike said nothing - he just continued to stare, his eyes boring into Louis in painful bursts, like a woodpecker hammering its way into his skull, sharp beak plunging in and out.

"Bye," said Louis, and he got into the wardrobe.

His arms were too full to mess around trying to close the doors behind him (a fiddly business at the best of times, usually resulting in trapped fingers) so he made sure to walk through the first few rooms, head held high. After the fourth room, when he was too far away to see, he started running.

He crashed into his room, dropped the weed and kicked it under the bed, felt like a child, tried to pull up a floorboard to hide it under, realized that Mike now knew about that trick, stuffed it all into the wardrobe, remembered that he also knew about that and it was probably an even worse idea than the floorboards, and ended up lying flat on the floor staring at the ceiling in a panic. Then, he sat up and rolled a couple of joints just to calm his nerves.

By the third one, his thoughts were thick and slow like melted chocolate, occasionally rippling as thoughts drifted past, too inconsequential for him to catch hold of. He had slumped to the floor, his whole body loose, and that was how Niall found him, pliant on the ground and giggling with his arms around the bags of weed like friends he was cuddling.

"You got it back, then?"

"Yeah," Louis said dazedly. "Good shit, man. Good shit..." He blew a cloud of smoke into Niall's face.

Niall held out his hand and Louis put another joint into his hand (although it took him several attempts; he kept missing Niall's hand, dropping the joint and then giggling as he scrabbled around on the floor for it. After a few minutes of this, Niall sighed impatiently, took the joint off him and lit it himself, whilst Louis lay back and dreamily watched the ceiling warp around above his head.

"Took you long enough," said Niall. "Is there a reason why you're trying to smoke it all at once?"

"Disposing of the evidence," Louis said vaguely.

"Pretty sure a drug test would be pretty condemning evidence."

"Oh, lighten up," Louis said thickly. "We're celebrating. It's taken frigging months to get this weed back. Get a grip."

Niall pursed his lips and made no response, although Louis could tell that he strongly wished to. For a moment, Louis wanted to, because he felt a desperate urge to tell him - about Mike, and the threat he'd made, and how he was smoking all this weed because he was fucking scared only that was making him feel worse and he could feel the anxiety stirring and he knew that it would only be amplified if he kept smoking it, and he also knew, in a weird, detached sort of way, that it was the weed talking and there was no way he wouldn't regret telling Niall what had happened once he'd sobered up a bit.

He took a deep breath and put the joint out, stubbing it out in a conveniently placed mug. Niall tutted at him and blew smoke in his face.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd ever get it back," he said. "You spent plenty of time dragging your heels about it."

"Yeah well next time you can hide your own damn weed, Niall."

"There won't _be_ a next time," Niall assured him. "That stuff's way more trouble than it's worth. I'm sticking to vodka from now on. I can handle cleaning up a bit of sick; what I can't handle is months of stress and shit and nagging you constantly about sorting out the mess we were in. I think this stuff has given us enough trouble to last a lifetime."

Deliberately not looking at him, Louis made a vague noise of agreement. He hoped that it was just the paranoia talking, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that the trouble wasn't over yet.

~*~

Louis swaggered into the lecture hall trying (and failing) not to look smug. They were to get their essays back that day, and he scanned the mixture of worried, sleepy and apathetic faces around him and thought about getting the paper back and seeing the results of actual hard work.

You could always tell who'd actually put effort into the paper; those who hadn't were shifty and defensive, glowering resentfully around the room, whereas those who had their shit together and had actually done some work were smirking. Usually, Louis was one of the ones who was still hungover, considering causing grievous bodily harm to all the smug tossers. He would fantasize about stabbing them with his pencil and writing his next attempt at the essay in their blood. Today, he had joined their ranks. It felt better than he'd thought it would.

Maybe this would be it, he thought. The turning point. No more useless, won't-amount-to-anything Louis. He could be hardworking, inspiring. He'd quit smoking, be in bed by 11pm every night. Maybe he'd even take up a sport - get back into football and iron out the little curve that was starting to show on his belly. That was an idea - start a football society. Niall loved to talk about sports, so surely he could be convinced to play some. That would look good on his CV - founder of an extracurricular group.

Louis was lost in such pleasant daydreams when the professor approached his desk, passing back essays. Immediately, he sat up straight, unable to hide his grin. She usually returned his papers with a grim set to her mouth, or a disapproving tut. He was looking forward to seeing her face when she passed his work back, but as she approached him, she was impossible to read.

The professor leaned over his desk. She smelt like old paper and powdery old-lady perfume.

"I'd like to see you in my office after class, okay?" she said quietly.

"...Okay," said Louis.

She moved off again, after sliding Perrie's paper onto the desk. Pulling it towards her, Perrie made a face.

"Ugh. Disaster. I won't write it half an hour before it's due in next time. What does she want to see you after class for? Did you do that badly?"

"No," Louis said, bewildered. "At least, I don't think so. I thought it was good."

"Well, maybe it is. She could be wanting to talk to you about transferring you to a higher level course. Or just to congratulate you without everyone getting jealous."

Heartened, Louis said, "Yeah! It's probably something like that."

As the professor stepped back up to her podium, clearing her throat, Louis flipped open his notebook and got ready to start copying notes down.

~*~

He'd never been summoned to a professor's office before; he had to ask directions and arrived ten minutes late, panting, which wasn't a great impression to make. Sweeping his fringe off his face, Louis knocked right across the professor's brass name plaque, hurting his knuckles. She opened the door to find him swearing and sucking on them; she raised her eyebrows at him, and Louis squirmed.

"Come in," she said. "Sit down."

Louis sat in a chair that looked deceptively welcoming, but immediately revealed itself as some kind of torture chair, rock solid and with strange lumps that poked him in uncomfortable places. Shifting, he watched the professor take her seat on the opposite side of the desk and offer him a piece of paper that he recognised as his essay. He took it.

"We need to talk about your essay. I have to say, Louis, when you turned this in, I was delighted. It was the first suggestion I'd had that you were actually taking this course seriously. If I'm being honest, a chimp could have written better essays than the first few you handed in. But this? This was concise, it was clever, it was well-constructed. It could have done with a quick run-through with a spellchecker, but otherwise it was sound."

"...Right," Louis said slowly.

She sighed. "Let me be frank with you, Louis. I've received a tip-off from a very reliable source, suggesting that this essay might be plagiarised. And given the difference in quality and writing style and the dramatic turnaround from the awful work you were giving me before, well. It hardly seems improbable.”

Louis couldn’t speak. There was a strange ringing in his ears, like he’d just stumbled out of a room full of screaming people. All he could hear was the professor’s voice in his head, saying “plagiarism” over and over and over, while he remembered the pride he’d felt watching his essay churn out of the printer, actually feeling like he’d accomplished something.

The professor sighed and took her glasses off, polishing them on her jumper. She had little red pinch marks on either side of her nose. 

“I have to take accusations of plagiarism very seriously, Louis. We’ll be looking into this further, but I’m afraid that until I can conduct a more thorough investigation, I’m going to have to suspend you from the course until further notice. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t understand,” Louis said. “That was my essay! I wrote it!”

“I’d like to take your word for it, Louis, but I can’t do that, and I received the information from a very reputable source. They would have nothing to gain from lying. I truly am sorry, but until we can prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that you didn’t plagiarise the essay, you can’t come to any more lectures. Of course, if this all turns out to be a mistake, I’ll arrange to have the source material sent to you so that you can catch up, and it could all be…”

He wasn’t listening any more. Someone had cut him free from the earth; he spiralled upwards, dizzy, her words drifting away until the only part of him that still felt real was his backside, still planted firmly on her uncomfortable chair.


	16. Chapter 16

It was obvious what had happened. Lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, a copy of the essay in his hand, Louis could have kicked himself. He’d been through the essay with a fine tooth comb, googled entire sentences, and of two things he could be absolutely sure: firstly, that it was all his essay, and secondly that he hadn’t stolen a word of it. For a moment in the professor’s office, he’d begun to panic, wondering if perhaps he  _ had _ plagiarised it, that the words had got caught up in his brain and ended up on paper again, and he’d thought they were his own. That had happened before; he’d written snippets of poetry or lyrics that he believed to be original and then later heard them on the radio or seen them in a magazine, realizing he’d copied them from deep within his subconscious completely by mistake. But he hadn’t found any part of his essay in any of his textbooks, or on the internet. He could be sure that the professor wouldn’t find any evidence that he’d cheated, but, Louis thought, that wasn’t really the point. It wasn’t the point at all.

Mike had reported him. He knew that it would fall through, that Louis would be proven innocent, but this was just a warning, just proof that he could fuck Louis’ entire life up just as easily as he’d said he could. With a whisper in the right ear, a finger pointed in the right direction, he could tear down everything Louis had worked for - and as much as he hated to admit it, Mike had him. He had him backed up against a cliff edge - in fact, he had him dangling off by one hand. Just one stamp on his fingers and Louis would be smashed against the rocks. 

Louis knew what he had to do. In fact, he’d already decided to do it. Even if he wasn’t doing it for himself - and he knew he was - one of the happiest moments of his life had been seeing the look on his mother’s face when he got accepted into his first choice university. He couldn’t imagine the look on her face if she found out he’d been kicked out of it. Two years of his life, he’d wasted messing around, and then two more, clawing his way to a university admission. He couldn’t throw that away. 

He already hated himself for doing it, but he knew it had to be done - and what was the point in putting it off? It was like a wax strip on his leg - tear it off straight away, rip out all the hairs, and it would sting, but leave it to dry on first and he would be left with bruises and welts behind. Louis sat up and stepped through the wardrobe.

Harry was sitting on his bed, wearing a blue sweater and filling in answers in a practice test in one of his textbooks; as Louis entered, he looked up, hair falling off his forehead, and his whole face lit up.

“Hi! Hey, guess what - I aced that essay! You made me understand joint enterprise without ever sitting through a law lesson, you’re a genius.”

“Yeah,” said Louis. “Great.”

Something in his voice must have sounded off, because Harry frowned, shutting the book. “Is everything okay?”

“I need to talk to you,” said Louis, and then he froze, because he had no idea what the fuck he was going to say, and Harry was sat cross-legged on the bed with one curl falling across his forehead, looking so endearing that it hurt. God, it hurt like a punch to the chest, and at that moment Louis realized he was going to have to be cruel, he was going to have to flatten down the wax strip and peel it off in slow-motion, because he had to make sure beyond all shadow of a doubt that there was no going back after this. He was too weak to sever the ties; if Harry tried to hold on, Louis was going to let him. And he _ couldn’t _ .

“Lou?”

Louis steeled himself. It was just another role. Another part to play. 

“I just came to tell you that I don’t think this is working out. You and me. We aren’t right for each other. It’s just not going to work.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“You and me,” said Louis. “We aren’t working. We’re not right. We’re like...chalk and cheese, you know? But in a bad way. Like magnets, north and south. We repel each other. You get what I’m saying?”

Harry gave a very strange, breathless kind of laugh, as if he’d been punched in the stomach halfway through a joke. He rose off the bed, stretching towards the ceiling, suddenly seeming far too small for the room. 

“This is a joke, right? You’re messing with me.”

“‘Fraid not,” said Louis. “Sometimes things just don’t work out.”

“But we were  _ fine.  _ We were great. Only yesterday, we were...and you were gonna take me out to that little ice cream shop. I don’t understand where this has come from, we’ve been getting on so well, things have been amazing. What the fuck, Louis? You said you loved me!”

Louis tried to speak, but the words had gotten tied up in his vocal cords, blocked off his airways. There was a pain in his throat, someone scraping away at the lining of it with a knife. All he could do was stand very still and watch the pain spread across Harry’s face like an infection.

“You said you loved me, you said that, you’ve been saying it for weeks - how can you change your mind about something like that so quickly? You can’t just fall in and out of love like a fucking revolving door, it doesn’t work like that! I’m in  _ love _ with you!”

His voice cracked; Louis’ own throat gave a pang in return and at that moment he realized he couldn’t break this gently, Harry wasn’t going to buy it, and he was too weak to allow for even the slightest possibility that Harry might hang on. He had to unpick his fingers, shove him off the cliff like they were in the fucking Lion King. To damage what they had so irreparably that Harry wouldn’t want to try and fix them, to pick up the pieces, to put sticky tape over the cracks. He had to crush them into dust; it was the only way. He had to breathe in very sharply and sniff to keep his nose from running. Already, his eyes stung. He had to be brutal.

“Oh, come on, babe,” he said harshly. “Surely I’m not that good of an actor.”

For a moment, Harry just stood stupidly, stunned, colour rising in his cheeks like Louis had slapped him. Then, realisation dawned.

“You used me.”

“That’s a little bit harsh. I like to think it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“All those things you said...none of it was true? You pulled all of that shit out of your arse - about loving me, and taking care of me, all that so you could have a shag? And after all I said about wanting it to mean something, about not just giving it away, and you nodded and smiled and ‘sure thing, babe, whatever you say because it’s not like that, I care about you, I don’t just want to fuck you’, and now you’re telling me that was all bollocks, and you never - you never -”

Harry was beginning to fall over his words, his breathing becoming heavier. Louis could see his hands shaking by his sides.

“You piece of shit - you - how could you just - ”

“Come on, law boy, you know some big words, try using a few of them,” said Louis.

“How badly did you want it? To lead me on for months - fucking  _ months  _ \- telling me everything I wanted to hear, helping me with my work, making out like you cared, and that was all some big lie? How could you be like that?”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t all fun and games, I helped you out where I could. I’m not pretending it was all about getting you into bed, we had some good times, but enough’s enough, now.”

“You’re tired of stringing me along, yeah? Got your dick wet, got what you wanted, and now you don’t wanna know? God, that stunt with the bath bombs, you really suckered me in there. Got to know me well enough to get me right where you wanted me. You make me sick, you’re a selfish little prick, you never meant a word of it - ”

“Well what was I supposed to do? Just let you sit on the stairs and shake like an addict with withdrawal? Watch you stress yourself to death until your hair fell out? I helped you. I got you through your little test, didn’t I? Got you to relax a bit, pulled that stick out of your arse; it was practically poking out through your gob when I met you - ”

“Shut up,” Harry said shakily. “You shut the fuck up, you don’t have the right - ”

“Well, you would know, law boy. What are you going to do, sue me?”

“Shut up!” Harry screamed.

Louis had seen him crying, seen him panicking, seen him in bed, but he’d never seen him lose control like this, spit flying, his whole face red. He seemed to have grown several inches, towering over Louis, who had never been more conscious of their height difference. At that moment he realized something he had never before been aware of; that it was easy to hurt someone you didn’t care for, but even easier to hurt someone you loved, because you knew exactly which button to press, where to start picking at someone and which strips to tear off them, to make them hurt. He knew all of Harry’s weak points, his insecurities, every way he could make him hurt, and he was doing it, and as much as he hated it there was some sick satisfaction, like being cheered on for bullying someone in the playground, a strange sense of pleasure at being able to hurt someone like this. And beyond all that, seeing Harry’s eyes shining, hearing the pain in his voice, and Louis hating himself for doing this, for lying, but knowing that he’d do it again, and all to save his own arse. Harry was right, he was selfish. He was foul.

“You’re telling me that all of this...none of it was real. You didn’t care at all.”

Louis nodded, lips pressed together to keep from screaming the truth, that he loved him, so much that it hurt, that to do this to him was like pouring corrosive acid all over his skin, like drinking it, feeling it bubble and burn all the way down.

“Well congratu-fucking-lations, Louis, you deserve a BAFTA,” Harry said sarcastically. “Because you sure fooled me. I bet you had a right laugh, didn’t you, with all your mates, bet you told them all. You’re disgusting. You’re a...you’re a…”

“Go on, let it all out, you know you want to. You’re a big boy, now, Harry, you can say the naughty word.”

“Fuck you, you complete  _ cunt _ , this is all a joke to you, isn’t it? But that’s you all over, isn’t it, Louis, taking the piss because God forbid you take anything seriously, God forbid anything gets in the way of your drinking and smoking and shagging everything that moves. I bet it wasn’t just me, was it, you were probably sleeping with half the dormitory behind my back, you couldn’t have kept it in your pants just for me, must have been a nightmare for you. Your life’s so hard, isn’t it? Still, who cares, we all love a bit of liver damage, don’t we, Louis?”

“Hey, hang about - ”

“Some of us work for what we’ve got. It’s not a game to me, Louis, I give a shit, and I thought maybe you gave a shit about me, and you were starting to give a shit about everything else - I thought I was helping you. We were helping each other. But you fucked us up like you fuck up everything else, because that’s what you do, Louis, you just fuck everything up.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Louis said, and suddenly he wasn’t acting any more. “I put up with so much shit for you - patted your back and listened to you stressing and helped you with your fucking homework, and now you’re just gonna turn around and tell me I’m nothing?”

“You told me I was nothing,” Harry said, his face wet. Tears were falling thick and fast; Louis wanted to wipe them away with one hand and scratch Harry’s eyes out with the other. “Nothing to you.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly, Louis. You’re done with me. That’s fine. Just don’t expect me to be happy to let you go. You made me fall in love with you; you can deal with what’s left over.”

They stood and stared at each other. Louis’ own face had become rather wet, his eyes blurring so that when he blinked it felt like he had false eyelashes on, a strange thick feeling clumping his lashes together, and he couldn’t see properly, Harry’s pink face warped out of perception. His fists were balled up and shaking; he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to punch something or grab Harry and hug him. All he knew was that he could feel fire spreading through his chest, coiling around his ribs, and he didn’t think he could bear it. Furious, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and got a clear look at Harry, and the look on his face took Louis’ breath away. Beautiful and blazing, Harry was looking at him with utter contempt, and Louis couldn’t blame him, because from Harry’s perspective, he’d ruined everything, pulled the rug out from beneath him and dumped him into a pit full of piranhas beneath. What right did he have to cry?

It was that which strengthened him. He wiped his eyes properly, sniffed very hard, and jammed his hands into his pockets so that Harry wouldn’t see his hands shaking. Harry drew himself to his full height - far more impressive than Louis’ - and folded his arms.

“So,” he said.

“So,” repeated Louis.

“I guess we’ve got nothing more to say to each other.”

“Guess not.”

It was a clear dismissal, but Louis was rooted to the floor; someone had poured concrete around his feet and it had already set. With the amount of time Harry spent in his room, he couldn’t shake the thought that they might not see each other after this, that they definitely wouldn’t speak. He’d kissed Harry, held him, whispered to him for the last time, and he hadn’t even known it. If he’d realized, he might have savoured it, held him tighter, kissed him harder. But then, he wondered, if he’d bound Harry tighter to him for one last night, would he have been able to let go?

“Fuck off, then,” said Harry.

Louis turned and yanked open the wardrobe door and put one foot over the threshold, and then Harry said, “Not like that.”

“What?”

“Not that way. Don’t be a coward, Louis. We’ve done enough of that. No more sneaking around. You wanna walk - so walk.”

He marched over to the bedroom door and held it open, bringing back a wash of memories of their earlier meetings, the martyred look on Harry’s face as he’d waited for Louis to leave, and the pain of it was like someone had grabbed his heart and squeezed. There was a draught coming in from the corridor, and it felt like a hurricane, whipping at his hands and face.

Louis walked. He stepped over the threshold, turned and opened his mouth - to say what? A parting insult, another cheap shot, an apology, to beg, he didn’t know - and the door slammed in his face, fierce and final, almost clipping his nose. Stunned, Louis stood with the tip of his nose millimetres from the wood, and strained his ears. He expected to hear sobbing from within, but there was only silence.

Turning around, he slid down the door until he was sat propped up against it, and he stayed there, head lolling against it, letting the tears fall and plop onto his shirt, leaving fat dark blotches on the fabric. Too numb to move, he stayed there until his arse grew numb and then he forced himself to his feet, moving too fast, dizziness leeching at him so that he staggered. He could hardly see.

It felt strange to walk from Harry’s to his own room, without having to shove aside clothing rails and trip over shoes and stuffed animals, and leave dirty footprints on other people’s floorboards. Dragging his feet, Louis walked and walked and then reached for a door and tried the lock, and then he staggered inside.

It wasn’t his room; he’d misjudged the distance. He’d forgotten that Niall never locked his door either; said there was no point, when anyone could just step into their own room and be in his within minutes without even touching the bedroom door. (Everyone else said that wasn’t the point.) Niall’s football posters lined the walls; there was a smell of weed and boy sweat and hastily sprayed deodorant to cover it up, and his duvet was crumpled, like he’d been rolling around on it. Louis didn’t care. He sat down on the bed, pulled up the creaky floorboard and pulled out the bottle of tequila that everyone knew Niall kept there, that he only bothered stowing under the floor for aesthetic purposes, because it made him feel like a public schoolboy breaking the rules, he said. Alcohol always tasted better when you weren’t supposed to be drinking it. Well, it was four o’clock on a Monday afternoon; if there was any time one shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, that was it. Louis unscrewed the cap and took a swig.

That was how Niall found him not forty minutes later, fuzzy and numb-lipped with drink, his face blotchy and his head spinning and his converse leaving muddy smudges on the bed-sheets.

“What, you forget the way to your own room now? You forget the way to the shop to buy your own fucking tequila? Oh, shit,” Niall said, getting a proper look at him in all his splotchy, drunken glory. “What happened?”

“Harry,” Louis said thickly. “Me n’ Harry. We broke up.”

“Shit,” said Niall, and it was a testament to the depth of their friendship that he didn’t waste time asking questions, scratching his head and demanding to know when Louis had ever gotten together with Harry in the first place. Instead, he grabbed Louis’ arm and hauled him into a sitting position. The tequila sloshed inside the bottle; Niall pulled it out of his slack, clumsy fingers. “Come on, let’s get you into the kitchen. You need a sandwich.”

“No,” Louis slurred, “I can’t, what if he’s in there, what if he sees me - ”

“He won’t,” Niall promised, “I’ll barricade the feckin’ door if I have to, now come with me.”

Steering Louis into the kitchen, Niall plonked him down at the table and immediately busied himself making the largest cheese sandwich Louis had ever seen, whilst Louis stared blearily at the table, trying to focus. Several minutes later, Niall dumped a plate in front of him that held a cheese sandwich the size of a brick, overflowing with shreds of grated cheese like pencil shavings. Nauseated, Louis eyed it with disgust.

"I can't eat that."

"You can, and you aren't leaving this table until you do," Niall said sternly. "Because either it'll soak up all the alcohol and sober you up a bit, or it'll make you puke and make you sober up a bit more; either option is better than alcohol poisoning, I think." And he snatched the bottle of tequila from Louis' slackened grip, banging it down on the counter.

"Yes, mother," Louis said sulkily, and he lifted the sandwich to his mouth - or tried to. He missed by quite a wide margin, smooshing the butty against his cheek and leaving a smear of butter there. Niall rolled his eyes.

It took what seemed like hours, but he persevered with the sandwich; he sensed that Niall really wasn't going to budge on this one. Besides which, being drunk hadn't helped. It had helped for maybe a tenth of a second, when the burn had first started travelling down his throat and obliterating the pain of hearing Harry say those awful things to him, and throwing them straight back - but now he just felt sick, his mouth tasted like a sewer and the whole room was whirling around his head like a carousel on drugs. He could practically hear the demented merry-go-round music. Or perhaps that was an ice cream van outside; he couldn't tell.

When the cheese butty was nothing more than a few slobbery crusts and some crumbs on Louis' chin, and his stomach was deciding whether or not to begin a rebellion, Niall dragged the plate away and said, "Now. Talk."

Louis did, and oh, what a relief it was to explain, to tell someone about the sneaking around and the night-time whispers and hating how he could hardly so much as look at Harry in public for fear that someone would see the love in his eyes. He told Niall about Mike, and about Harry shaking in the dark, about how he smelled like Lush and painted his nails glittery colours and kissed like he thought you'd forgotten how and wanted to teach you to do it again. It probably made no sense, words exploding out of him like fireworks, but the relief of it was like ripping off a plaster. The most satisfying pain. And when he finally told Niall about the essay, and Mike's threat, and breaking Harry to make sure he wouldn't love him again, he collapsed into a snotty mess, bawling all over the table. Niall said nothing, just passed him bits of kitchen roll to mop his face with, and patted his arm every now and then.

"Shit," Niall said when he was done.

"What do I do?" Louis wailed. "I love him."

"I tell you what you do," said Niall, gripping his arm so tightly that it hurt. 

Louis looked up, surprised. "Ow. You're hurting me, geddoff - "

"You listen to me," said Niall. "You've made your bed, so you lie in it, and you make this worth it. You hurt him for the sake of your degree, so for fuck's sake do some work! Start taking it seriously! You prove you didn't fake that essay, you write ten more like it, but better. You stop drinking when you should be in lectures. We'll get rid of that weed, that way if this Mike guy turns nasty for some reason, he can't pin anything on you. Then you make all this worth it and you do what you need to do. And stop drinking fucking tequila whenever something goes wrong, because I'm starting to think you have a problem."

"But it hurts."

"No shit, Sherlock. What do you think love's about? It's about sacrifices. Only this time, you sacrificed something for your sake rather than his. That's fine. Sometimes... sometimes you have to put yourself first."

Louis didn't think they were talking about him and Harry any more. He looked up and tried to focus on Niall, who didn't seem to be able to meet his gaze. Instead, he started picking at something crusty on the tabletop, scraping it away with his thumbnail.

They both watched for a while as flecks of muck came away, and then Louis said, "Is everything all right?"

Niall shrugged. "Broke up with Sarah last night."

"Oh," Louis said crestfallen. "Oh  _ no _ ."

"S'alright. Knew it was coming anyway. She ended it. Meant I didn't have to."

Louis struggled for a minute. "But why?" he said.

"She wanted something I wasn't prepared to give her." Niall took a deep breath and looked up. "Louis."

"Yeah?"

"I've got something to tell you."

"Okay."

"Louis, I..."

"Yeah?"

"I'm -"

"Yeah? Go on, what, what is it?"

"Jesus, shut up! I can't get a word in edgeways! I'm putting you on a time out."

Louis pouted, but folded his arms and put one finger on his lips like when he was in primary school. That made Niall's mouth twitch, but then it kept doing it, flickering at the corner like he had a nervous tic.

"Louis, I'm asexual."

There was a long pause as Louis struggled to get his brain into gear. It was like he'd been used to driving an automatic, and now he'd had to switch to manual and the gearstick kept sticking and he kept stalling, his brain juddering up and down when he couldn't get it moving quickly enough.

"What's that? It's when you don't like sex, innit?"

"Kind of," Niall said. "I don't fancy people, I guess. I mean, I can see a girl I like the look of, but I don't think 'oh, I wanna stick my dick in her.' My brain just doesn't work that way. I'm not a virgin because I can't find anyone to shag me, I'm a virgin because I don't _want_ anyone to shag me."

"Oh," said Louis. Then he groaned and lurched forwards. "Oh, God."

"What?"

"I thought you were just nervous! I've been hurling women at you all year, I practically threw Sarah on top of you, and you didn't - oh God, I didn't know, I'm sorry -"

"Hey, hey, Louis, it's fine! Well. I mean, obviously it's not fine, you shouldn't have been trying to force women on me anyway, especially not when I kept telling you to quit it, but I don't blame you for not knowing I was asexual. I didn't either, until recently."

"How did you know?"

Niall shrugged. "Google, mostly. Sarah had been round, and she was getting really pissy with me because I didn't want to do anything more than make out, and she got kind of offended - cos she was all over me, you know, and I really didn't want to be dealing with it, and she's practically grinding on my leg like it's a fucking stripper pole and I wasn't turned on in the slightest. So then she started saying I had erectile dysfunction, and I knew that wasn't right, cos it's not like I never get hard, it just doesn't happen a lot. Morning wood, you know. And usually I just ignore it and make it go down. I've tried masturbating and it does nothing for me. I'm not fussed about that. So that night after she left - stormed out, is more like it - I did some googling. Random stuff. 'Don't wanna have sex with my girlfriend', 'girlfriend doesn't make me horny', you know, that kind of thing. And it took a lot of clicking, cos most of the results were saying 'she's ugly', which she clearly isn't, or 'you're gay', which I'm not. I don't want to stick it in girls, and I don't want to stick it in guys either. And then eventually I found these forums, and all these people talking about asexuality, and it just... clicked. That's me. And I'm not the only one."

Drunk as he was, it was all Louis could do to process this information, let alone try to understand it. He didn't get how someone could just not want sex. Although he considered himself to be in control of his sex drive, Louis did think about sex a lot, especially during the past few weeks with Harry. When he wasn't in bed with Harry, he wanted to be in bed with Harry, and not reading the paper and watching the news, either. He couldn't even imagine not wanting someone in that way. But, he thought, that must be how Niall felt about him wanting it, about him wanting blokes. There'd be plenty of time to get his head around it later, when his brain wasn't shooting around like a golf ball in a washing machine.

"Did you tell her?"

Niall shook his head. "Nah. I haven't told anyone, actually. I wasn't gonna tell you, but I figured, you're probably not gonna remember this anyway... Although if I'd known you were gonna take it this well, I'd have done it when you were sober. Now I'm gonna have to do it all over again in the morning. And maybe again after that, if you're too hungover to understand me."

"How'd you think I was gonna take it?" demanded Louis.

"I dunno. Maybe tell me I just hadn't found the right girl, or it was just nerves, or to take some viagra and man up. I dunno. You've been pretty aggressive about getting me laid; you can't blame me for expecting you to accept this."

"No," Louis said. "I guess not... I fuckin' love you, you know."

"I know," Niall said. "I love you, too. Although if you tell anyone I said that, then that bottle of tequila is going straight up your -"

“You’re a fucking nutter, you know that, right?”

“And you’re a drunk, but I won’t hold it against you. Come on, let’s go and grab that weed. We need to get rid of it before that Mike starts skulking around again.”

~*~

In a last ditch attempt to sober Louis up, they ended up on the hill, the wind catching at their hair and pinching their cheeks. Niall had laid his jacket out on the floor for them to sit on, and was shivering slightly, cross-legged with one hand cupped around the joint he was trying to light, clamped between his teeth as the lighter flickered on and off. They’d agreed on a couple of final joints, just to say goodbye as they got rid of the rest, and Louis had already had two and found that they didn’t mix well with the alcohol. Rather than the usual floaty feeling, he felt like he’d been trapped on a swing and had just staggered off. 

The darkness wrapped around them, and Louis looked up at the sky, which was cloudless but devoid of stars, like a stretch of black silk. Something about that relieved him, that he didn’t have to sit and look at the same stars he and Harry had watched. Leaning back, propped up on his hands, he stared blankly at the sky and occasionally removed the joint to puff like a dragon into the air. There was something comforting about the quiet, with only the wind whistling around them, snatching away their words and their thoughts alike. 

As the night wound on, the wind died down and the moon slipped back behind the clouds. The city below seemed to stretch out for miles like a toy town, the streetlights blazing orangey like pumpkin lanterns, pinpricks of light from people’s windows, and if he squinted, he could see cars moving below like ants.

Louis looked across at Niall, whose hair was blowing in the wind, and his gaze fell upon the round cherry glow of the cigarette between his lips. They’d moved on to normal fags now; half the weed, they’d thrown around for the wind to carry away, some they’d buried, and they’d even stuffed a bag in the bin, which might make a nice present for anyone desperate enough - or gross enough - to go rooting through it.

“You know what I think love is?”

“What?”

Louis stubbed his cigarette out on the grass, ashes flying. “Love is when you know how to destroy someone, but you don’t.”

“Nah,” said Niall.

Louis looked at him. “No?”

“Nah,” said Niall. “Love is teaching someone how to destroy you, and trusting them not to.”

They both sat in silence, and Louis watched the sunburst light of the cigarette flash between Niall’s fingers, until his vision blurred and he had to close his eyes against the pain that came from staring at that one small light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's one mystery solved. I never intended for Niall’s sexuality to become such a big part of the story, but it got away from me, somehow… Kudos to everyone who guessed what was going on! I did try not to make it too obvious.
> 
> Disclaimer: I myself am not asexual, and Niall’s character is not supposed to represent every single asexual person ever; I am aware that not all asexual people are virgins, some asexual people do have a sex drive and do masturbate, etc. I am also by no means trying to insinuate that an asexual person and an allosexual person cannot have a perfectly healthy and fulfilled relationship. Niall and Sarah’s relationship problems were caused by a lack of communication on both sides, not because of their differing sexualities.
> 
> If anybody on the asexual spectrum is reading this and would be willing to give me some feedback on my portrayal of an asexual character, and how I could improve writing about asexual people in the future, that would be greatly appreciated!


	17. Chapter 17

Louis had to say one thing for Mike: he was a quick worker. The very next day, when Louis was still nursing an acidic hangover and could barely focus on his phone to read it, his professor sent him an email summoning him to her office. Bloated and thick with sleep - he'd drunk enough water to fill a large bathtub in an attempt to banish the hangover - he went and sat once again in her uncomfortable chair. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed less uncomfortable this time, like it had been stuffed with rocks on his previous visit and now she'd actually put some stuffing in as well. With steepled fingers and a slightly embarrassed expression, she admitted that there had been some sort of mistake and his essay wasn't plagiarised after all.

The Louis of a few days ago would have stuck his middle finger up at her and given her merry hell, but new Louis could barely summon the energy to thank her. He certainly couldn't summon the energy to thank her convincingly. In fact, he sounded like a sulky child who was being forced to say thank you for an unwanted Christmas present. The professor peered at him, but made no comment on his lack of enthusiasm, and when she dismissed him, it seemed to take him forever to shuffle from the room, as if time had slowed down. Stretchy like gum, it held him back, tugging on his arms and legs so that it seemed like an unbearable struggle just to get back to his room.

Walking past Harry's room was the worst part; he could have sworn the door was watching him, accusing him; he had to hold his breath on the way past and it didn't help the horrible nervous feeling in his belly. It was like he'd missed a step on the way downstairs, that jolting moment just before you slip as your foot plunges through nothing when you expected something to be there. Only it went on and on, stuck on a loop, and he couldn't bear it.

Entering his room, he went and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while; the brown smudges of damp in one corner; the cracks spider-webbed across the ceiling, the little gold pins with torn edges of paper still stuck beneath them, where the previous occupant had pinned things to the ceiling and then torn them down in a hurry. All these tiny, stupid details. He could count all the bobbles on his over-worn t-shirt, all the creases in the duvet.

Then, he sat up. Too quickly, his head thumping. Gritting his teeth against a wave of throbbing, Louis got to his feet and went to get his laptop from where he'd left it on the tiny desk. It was like Niall said. He'd made this sacrifice; the least he could do was make it worth it.

Switching the laptop on, he brought his emails up again. Two from itunes, two from Amazon, one from the library back in Doncaster reminding him that he had taken out a book eight months ago and owed them a ridiculously large fine, and two from his professor, one unopened. He clicked on it.

She'd sent him a copy of the powerpoints from the lectures he'd missed, and a transcript of exactly what she'd said. Pulling out a notebook, Louis leafed through it to a blank page and started making notes. His fingers felt unused, clumsy, but he persevered. When the headache continued to needle at his temples, he took two paracetamol and drank half a bottle of water and carried on writing. He had to get up for a wee four times in the next hour, but each time he went straight back to the powerpoint afterwards. Maybe, he thought, this was what being an adult was like. Not stopping drinking, but powering through the hangover. Not giving up on the fun stuff, but putting the hard stuff first. In losing Harry, he'd finally found something in himself, some form of resolve. He might even have gone so far as to call it "sense."

Smiling - it was a feeble thing, twitchy and small, but a smile nevertheless - Louis massaged his temples with one hand and wrote with the other one.

~*~

He didn't see Harry again until almost a week after the break-up. Louis was sat at the kitchen table, trying to rehearse a monologue he had to learn in class - no easy feat with Perrie galloping around the table in a silvery dress, belting out Adele at the top of her lungs. The girl had one hell of a voice on her, but that didn't make it any less distracting. Jade was knelt on the floor, doing her make up using the oven door as a mirror; Louis had no idea how she could see past the grease. Jesy and Leigh-Anne were playing Heads' Up, or something similar, but apparently a ruder version, because every so often Jesy would bellow "Cock! Hairy cock? Oh COME ON, IT'S GOT TO BE A COCK!" and Leigh-Anne would start giggling. Niall and Liam were the only ones not actively distracting Louis from his work. Liam was texting some girl from his engineering course, thumbs flying across the screen of his phone. Niall, the only one respecting Louis' new dedication to his work, was just watching him in silence. This in itself was a little distracting, as it made Louis uncomfortable, but he didn't have the heart to say anything.

"Right!" said Perrie, leaping onto the table and perching on the edge of it, jostling Louis sideways as her thigh hit his arm.

Scowling, he shifted away. The table creaked alarmingly, wobbling as Perrie adjusted her skirt. It was not a very good table - and it was still recovering from when someone (not Louis, obviously...so not Louis) had danced on it whilst drunk. Louis wasn't sure it could cope with this new strain; he leaned back, eyeing the table-legs.

"Who's coming out tonight, then?" Perrie asked, apparently unperturbed by the groaning table.

"Me!" came a chorus of yells.

"What do you think I'm painting my face for?" demanded Jade, and promptly stabbed herself in the eye with a mascara wand. "Ow! Fuck! Fuck!" She staggered backwards, blinking madly, with a new black streak on her eyeball like someone had poked her in the eye with a dirty finger.

“Excellent,” said Perrie. “Boys?”

Liam, engrossed in his phone, didn’t look up. Louis pretended not to hear. 

“BOYS!”

“What? Oh.” Liam looked like she’d kicked him. “Er. Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Your enthusiasm overwhelms me. Lou? Niall?”

“I’ll give this one a miss, thanks,” said Louis, raising his book. “Lots to do, you know.”

“All right,” said Perrie, snatching the book and holding it way above his head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“It’s called responsibility,” said Louis, getting up and reaching for it. “You might have heard of it.”

Perrie stood on his abandoned chair and held the book higher. “No. That’s bullshit. Since when did you care about work? This is Louis I-was-drunk-for-three-days-straight Tomlinson. Louis I-fucked-the-phantom-of-the-opera-up-the-hill Tomlinson. Except for the past week, you’ve been Louis holier-than-thou Tomlinson, sitting there looking sanctimonious with your nose in a book. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stay sober for so long, and you’ve had about as much life in you as a wet dishcloth.”

Louis clambered onto the table, albeit clumsily, stood up and stretched towards the book; the table sagged alarmingly. “I’m trying to grow up a bit. Besides which, there’s more to life than drinking until you throw up on your shoes.”

“The aliens have taken him,” Perrie said, and she hurled the book across the room; Jesy caught it one-handed, tucked it under her arm, and bellowed, “Is it a unicorn?”

“How the  _ fuck _ is that a unicorn?” demanded Leigh-Anne, waving her fingers above her head.

“Give him a break, guys. He’s behind as fuck, you know that.” Niall said.

“Alright Paul McCartney, does that mean you’re gonna stay home and study with him?”

“Fuck, no,” said Niall. “I’m coming.”

“Is it an  _ aeroplane _ ?” Jesy said.

“Dickhead!” shouted Leigh-Anne.

“All right, there’s no need to be rude.”

“No, dickhead! I was miming dickhead!”

“How is  _ that _ a dickhead?” yelled Jesy, mimicking Leigh-Anne’s wave.

“Can I have my textbook back, please?” Louis asked.

“Shut up, Louis.”

Just at that moment, the kitchen door opened, Harry walked in, and Louis’ heart leapt straight out of his mouth and flopped onto the kitchen floor like a dying fish, twitching frantically. 

Somehow, impossibly, Harry was even more beautiful than he’d remembered. Dressed all in black - tight black jeans and a silky shirt, unbuttoned, he stepped into the kitchen and immediately spotted Louis. His expression soured.

It was sick, that Harry looking at him like he was a stranger - less than a stranger, like he was someone on the street who had been caught doing something disgusting - made his heart quicken. Louis licked his lips. The whole room seemed to have become a tableau. Jesy had paused, still mimicking Leigh-Anne’s waving. Crouched by the oven, Jade had stopped midway through dabbing mascara off her eyeball. Feeling incredibly foolish, Louis shifted and stepped off the table, back onto the floor. He swallowed.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said Harry flatly.

They all hovered uncertainly, like they’d been caught laughing at a funeral. After a moment, Harry shrugged and walked over to the sink, pouring himself a glass of water. They all watched in silence. 

His shoulders remained taut. Harry drained the glass in two swallows, washed it out, put it on the draining board and walked straight out again, without looking at any of them - particularly Louis. As soon as the door had closed behind him, Louis sat down heavily on the chair, almost sitting on Perrie’s foot. He felt like an ant, and Harry had just stepped on him.

“What the fuck was that?” asked Jesy. “Who pissed in _ his  _ coffee?”

“Louis, by the looks of things,” said Liam, not looking up from his phone. “The way he looked at you, mate, it was like he was trying to set you on fire with his mind.”

Louis said nothing, just stared at his hands, clasped in his lap, until they blurred out of focus.

“Oh, leave him alone, we all know that guy’s a weirdo,” said Niall. “He hates everyone. He’s some kind of nun. Anything that isn’t a textbook is on his blacklist. Anyway, never mind that; where are we going on this night out, then?”

Immediately, they all broke out into a frenzied argument about the respective benefits of the two most frequented local clubs, Crescendo - drinks only £1 but the toilets were little more than a satanic, shit-smelling pit in the ground and after drinking one’s own weight in vodka, having somewhere decent to pee was a necessity - and Level, which was smaller and more expensive but you were less likely to get vomited on and step in a pool of spilt drinks by the bar. As they bickered, Louis looked over at the door through which Harry had left, and when he looked back again, he found Perrie staring at him with a knowing look that he didn’t much like. For a moment, he met her gaze, but something in it had him dropping his eyes back to the table, and allowing himself to be lost in the whirl of conversation as Perrie continued to watch him in silence.

~*~

Things were unseasonably quiet for a while. It didn’t help that Louis had begun to lock himself in his room with his textbooks, avoiding Harry - although Harry was trying just as valiantly to avoid him. It was as the early days in their relationship; Louis walking into a room and Harry walking out of it; shock like a punch to the chest every time he happened upon him by accident; anger, hurt, pooling every time Harry turned his nose up at the sight of him, or slammed a door when leaving a room Louis had just entered. It was childish, it was pathetic, and it hurt Louis’ feelings more than it ought to have. He’d dumped Harry, after all. Louis thought the reason he found the whole thing so offensive was that he was only pretending to be tired of Harry, whereas every nasty thing Harry had said to him had been of his own volition. Sometimes, when he sat still for too long, or got into bed at night, those comments circled around his head like cartoon birds flapping around, pecking away at him.  _ God forbid you take anything seriously, God forbid anything gets in the way of your drinking and smoking and shagging everything that moves…. that’s what you do, Louis, you just fuck everything up.  _ He wasn’t sure, then, whether he even wanted them to make up, whether he wanted to go digging out the splinters of all the horrible things Harry said to him, or whether he just wanted to go and bang on Harry’s door and scream at him and say even worse things and hurt him even more. And then he wished he could be in Harry’s arms so it would all make sense and he ended up, again, fiddling with that old pound coin that he’d kept, stupid and sentimental, because it helped him to make that first choice. He chose Harry. Then, he chose himself. That was all there was to it.

He kept the coin anyway. He might need it. He was sure there’d be plenty of bad decisions coming up; might as well have something to blame it on.

~*~

He saw Mike, once. Louis was coming up the stairs to his flat and Mike was coming down. They both froze, Louis’ heart leaping like a bungee jumper, twanging up and down on a bit of elastic. For a moment, they stood and stared. Then, Mike gave a curt nod. An approving nod.

 

Louis barged past him, hating the fact that just seeing the man’s face had made him tear up, hating the sick anger of knowing that he’d won and that Louis had let him. 

 

He went to bed early that night, lay awake staring at the cracks in the ceiling and replaying over and over, Harry’s voice in his head, telling him he was a selfish cunt.

~*~

Around three weeks afterward, Louis came home to find Sarah sat waiting outside his bedroom door.

He had just come up the stairs, deliberately not looking at Harry’s closed door, swinging a couple of ASDA bags in one hand. When he saw her, sat on the floor looking tiny in a too-big hoodie, hunched over on her phone, he hesitated, feet shuffling indecisively on the carpet.

Things had been frosty with Sarah ever since she’d broken up with Niall. Forget frosty - they’d been downright Arctic. As Niall’s best friend, she seemed to equate Louis on equal footing with him, treating him with contempt, or not at all. Being around her was like being around a volatile cat that might suddenly pounce on your hand and start tearing it to shreds. He’d started sitting next to other people when they met up with mutual friends, ducking his head to avoid meeting her gaze when they passed on the street and even that wasn’t enough to avoid the sensation of her eyes boring into the back of his head, headlights on full beam, scorching his scalp. In fact, Sarah was coming second only to Harry on Louis’ list of people he didn’t want to see, if only because they both gave him withering glares whenever he came into view.

Sarah looked up, scuppering any chances Louis might have had to back down the stairwell again without her seeing him. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and marched down the corridor.

Her eyes were blotchy, her mascara smeared. When she looked up, she didn’t look like she wanted to stab him. That, he supposed, was an improvement.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” said Louis. “Niall’s room is the next one along.”

“I know,” she said, getting to her feet and tucking her phone back into her pocket. “I came to talk to you.”

“...Right,” said Louis. “Well. You’d better come in, then.”

He saw her looking around his room as he entered, and immediately regretted inviting her in. Louis’ work ethic might have improved since breaking up with Harry, but his incentive to clean up, do laundry or even empty the overflowing bin was at an all time low. It was remarkable how much of a mess he could make without moving from the same spot; his desk was piled high with papers, textbooks, sweet wrappers, completed essays, half-finished essays covered in red pen scribbles, post-it notes, half-empty bottles of water and a scruffy year planner that an aunt had given him in 2014, so he was now writing important reminders for himself on all the wrong dates. A vague smell of Lynx and socks hung around the room. His spiderman duvet had something crusty on it, either dried yoghurt or dried come; he hoped she hadn’t noticed that. The bin was piled high with rubbish, a veritable everest of landfill that he couldn’t be bothered emptying. Embarrassed, Louis scratched the back of his neck.

“I, er, haven’t had time to clean up lately.”

“Right,” said Sarah. She sat down on the bed, neatly avoiding the yoghurt wank stain. 

“So, er. Not to be rude or anything, but...why are you here?”

“It’s about Niall.”

“I guessed. What specifically about him?”

Sarah was picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of her hoodie, and for a while she didn’t answer. With her head down, hair dark against her shoulders, she painted such a forlorn picture that Louis felt sorry for her. What with all the mess with Niall, and being honour-bound to side with his friend, come hell or high water, he’d almost begun to see her as a caricature, a sex-obsessed harpy crawling all over Niall and then screeching at everyone when he turned her down. Hence, he’d forgotten that Niall had essentially rejected her with no warning and no explanation, time and time again, and then when she asked for an explanation, had clammed up and refused to give her one. Knowing what he did, that Niall was ace and terrified to tell anyone in case they didn’t believe him, he could understand - but how could he blame Sarah for being upset and angry that Niall had treated her that way?

“You’re Niall’s best friend, aren’t you, Louis?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“And he tells you everything, doesn’t he?”

“Well. Within reason. I don’t expect him to tell me every time he has a fag or goes for a shit, but - ”

Sarah giggled and then a tear escaped and ran down her nose, sudden and shocking, like a spark. Then, she was crying, splotchy and messy, her nose running and all. Dismayed, Louis stood and floundered. It had been so long since he’d been home, he’d forgotten how to deal with crying girls. Besides which, when his sisters cried he usually turned them upside down and tickled them, and he didn’t think Sarah would be too keen on that.

“Shit,” he said.

Louis hurried into the bathroom, tore off a wad of toilet paper and gave it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, mopping her face.   "I just needed to talk to someone and I didn't know who else to ask."

"If it's about Niall, why don't you try talking to him?"

"I might, if I thought he'd give me a straight answer. Besides, he's been avoiding me."

_ I wonder why, _ thought Louis. "Well what do you want to talk about?"

"What did he say? About us splitting up."

"Er, he said...he said that you were very upset," Louis said carefully. He thought 'hysterical' was actually the word Niall had used, but he knew better than to tell her that.

"Yes," Sarah said, "and what did he say about it?"

“What?”

"You know why we broke up, don’t you?”

"Yeah,I know the gist of it," Louis admitted.

"Then why did he do it?"

He blinked. "What? You broke up with him."

"He made me!" said Sarah, screwing up the tissue in her fist. "He was impossible to deal with."

" _ Niall _ ?" said Louis. Niall was so easy-going, you could knock him over and he'd just take it as an opportunity to take a nap.

Sarah wasn't listening. "I just need to understand. What did I do wrong? I tried so hard to make him like me, to make him want me. I tried everything. I sexted him, I sent him pictures, I practically did a lap-dance for him every time we said hello. I dropped hints, I even fucking asked for it. Excuses, excuses, time and time again. I thought maybe he was one of those guys who's spent so much time wanking that they can't get off with someone else, so I offered skype sex, phone sex, you name it. One time, I asked him round to my room for Netflix and chill, and we ended up watching the whole of Breaking Bad in the space of two weeks and we never even got to second base. We just watched the show."

"That's a good show," Louis pointed out. "You should have picked something shit, like Misfits."

"That's not the point," she snapped. "I could have picked Spongebob fucking Squarepants and he would have been more interested in the show than he was in getting into my knickers. I took him to Ann Summers and paraded around in front of him in their entire lingerie catalogue and he just sat there. One time, he told me I looked nice. Nice! You would have thought he was my granny. I started wondering if he was gay -"

"He's not gay," said Louis.

"Then why? What more was I supposed to do? Is there something wrong with me?"

"Er," said Louis.

She looked up, eyes flashing, and he backtracked very quickly, recognizing that he was approaching dangerous territory. 

"No! No, of course not! Look, Niall likes you a lot, he's just not ready for that kind of relationship."

Sarah gave him a filthy look. "He's a grown man and we were together for nearly six months. If he's not ready now, when will he be?"

"Look," said Louis, "you need to give him a break. He's a good guy."

"He's a coward, and a shit, and he needs to just spit out whatever he needs to say to me instead of pretending to fall asleep whenever I try to touch him!"

"You can't just pressure people," Louis snapped. "Maybe he didn't want you to touch him. You ever think about that? You go round grabbing a guy's dick every five minutes and it's bound to start pissing him off. Just because he's a guy, I suppose you think he'll be up for it whenever you want. If it was the other way round, and he was all over you trying to get you to shag him, everyone would be calling him a scumbag, telling you to dump him."

"Oh, so you're on his side!"

"Yeah, I am! He's my mate."

" _I'm_ your mate."

"Yeah well, not being funny, but you haven't really been acting like one. Storming about giving me dirty looks and slagging off my friend, and getting pissy when I won't join in. You haven't spoken to me since the two of you broke up, and for what? What did I do?"

"You're as bad as him!"

"He hasn't done anything wrong."

“Look, Louis,” Sarah said, “I know you don’t like how he’s treated me, I can see it in your face. And I know you know why. You just don’t want to tell me because you don’t want to hurt my feelings, or because you’ve got some stupid bro code thing going on, us against the women kind of shit. Niall’s your friend, but I’m your friend too. I just want to understand.”

Louis licked his lips. On one hand, Sarah  _ was  _ his friend; he liked her, he understood that she was justified in being upset, even if she had about as much subtlety as a brick wall when it came to trying to persuade Niall to have sex with her. At the same time, he sympathised for Niall. It reminded Louis of his own first - and last - girlfriend, who could make him laugh until he cried, he could have spent hours with her without getting bored, and who shared ninety percent of his interests - but he could no more have had sex with her than he could have had sex with a komodo dragon. Looking at it from that perspective, it was easier to empathise with Niall than with Sarah. But Louis couldn’t ignore the fact that, at least partially, this whole mess was his fault. He’d introduced Niall and Sarah with the aim of getting them to have sex; why wouldn’t she be confused that Niall had no interest in her sexually, when Louis had introduced him as a man who desperately wanted to get laid?

Sarah had started crying again. Louis chewed the inside of his cheek. She was his friend… but she was the kind of friend who lent him pencils in class and asked him if he’d done the homework, the kind of friend he might hang out with occasionally to get drunk with. Niall had given him weed and made him a sandwich the size of his head to help him get over a breakup. Niall had been his best friend since the moment he’d burst through Louis’ wardrobe and scared him half to death. And there was never an excuse to out someone without their consent, no matter what they’d done. There was no choice, no contest. He couldn’t tell her.

She seemed to realize his decision before he had chance to vocalise it. Eyes hardening, she got to her feet. “Fine. You deserve each other, the two of you; you’re both whiny little gutless cowards. I hope you’re very happy together.”

Sarah flounced over to the door, turned dramatically back, and then hurled her screwed up, used tissue at him. It hit him in the chest, bounced off and landed on the floor. She slammed the door behind her.

Groaning, Louis flopped down on his bed. A few seconds later, Niall stuck his head through the wardrobe doors.

"She gone?"

"Yeah. Kicking and screaming all the way. How long have you been listening?"

Niall shrugged. "Couple of minutes. To tell the truth, I've been waiting for her to leave. She was sat out there for a good hour, I kept looking out to check. Even if I came through Harry's room, she'd see me at the end of the corridor. I'm starving."

Louis dug out a cereal bar from one of his shopping bags and tossed it to him. Tearing it open, Niall tore off a chunk with his teeth and swallowed it whole.

"Thanks. What did she want?"

"Couldn't you tell? You need to talk to her, mate. You really fucked her over. She deserves an explanation, at least. I lost my rag with her, I know, but she's not a bad person. You hurt her."

"I know, I fucked up, but it's not that simple."

"Sure it is, why don't you just tell her?"

"No!" Niall said vehemently. He sat down so hard that the whole bed shook. "It's not like that for me, Louis. Look, I'm not saying you have it easy, being gay. I  _ know _ that's not easy. But of all the sexualities you could be, apart from straight, it's the one people find easiest to accept. Okay, maybe you get a few years of being called 'faggot', and people saying it's just a phase, and your mum wailing that she's never gonna be a grandma. And I know you get some shit. But people believe in your sexuality at the end of the day. If I say I'm ace, no one will buy it. Especially because I'm a guy. It'll be all, 'you just haven't found the right girl', or, 'maybe you're depressed', or 'everyone needs sex' or the bloody erectile dysfunction gig. No one respects my sexuality, even you. You think it's weird, don't you? I know you do. If I tell Sarah, after all this, she's not gonna believe me. She's gonna think I'm lying to her and then she'll go out and spread nasty lies about me and the whole world's gonna think my dick doesn't work."

"Well, what's so bad about that?" said Louis. "Sure, it's a bit embarrassing, but it doesn't matter, it's not like you're gonna use it."

"Because eventually some girl's gonna come along who doesn't care, and like Sarah says, they put me on medication to make me hard and then I have to go along with the whole thing again, trying to fuck some girl when I don't want to. It's not down here that worries me - it's up here." He tapped his temple.

“Look, I know I’ve not been through what you’ve been through. But I’ve been through something kind of similar, and in my experience, it’s scary, but you’ll feel a hell of a lot better once you start being honest about it. You can start off small. Your parents, maybe. Your brother. Or if you think they’d take it badly, try telling the others. I know they’re a bunch of dickheads, but I think they’d listen.”

“They won’t,” Niall said bitterly. “Nobody ever does. How many times did I try to tell you, before you accepted it? You kept shoving her at me, trying to force me into it. I told you I didn’t want to. Why should having a word for it make it any different?”

“Because,” Louis said carefully, “you can explain it to them. You can tell them what it’s called, they can Google it, realize that there are loads of people who share your sexuality and feel the same way as you do. And I know it takes some getting used to; you’re right, I still haven’t completely got my head around it. But you probably haven’t got your head around why I like sticking my dick up another bloke’s bum. We’re different. That’s fine. Sarah didn’t take it well, because she had a personal stake in it, she got offended because she wanted to have sex with you and thought you were fobbing her off. But we’re your mates. And quite frankly, mate, I’d rather eat regurgitated spam out of a dirty sock than fuck you.”

Niall snorted with laughter. “Thanks, Louis.”

“You’re welcome.” Growing serious, Louis added, “I mean it, though. We’re your mates, at the end of the day. It may not seem like it, but we aren’t actually bothered where you stick your dick, or if you don’t, as long as it makes you happy. No one is gonna give you any shit for it. And if they do, they’re no friend of mine.”

Niall softened. “Thanks, Louis.”

“Any time,” said Louis. “But remember, if you tell anyone I said that I’ll tell everyone about you professing your undying love to me over a cheese sandwich. Deal?”

“Deal.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted this fic to be twenty chapters and I could have sworn it WAS but I must have lost count somewhere. Either this chapter or next chapter had to be painfully long or else it wouldn't fit - so next chapter is going to be LONG. (It would have been this chapter, but...suspense.)

It had been drizzling and his jacket glistened with raindrops as he hurried up the stairs. He was blasting  _ Hello  _ by Adele in his headphones, loudly enough to give him a slight headache, and he was bobbing his head to the music and therefore didn’t notice the mass of cardboard boxes lying in the hallway until he tripped over one of them and smashed his shin on another as he fell. He hit the floor with a sound like someone throwing a TV down a flight of stairs, and landed, stunned, pain shooting through his knees and radiating through the rest of him. His palms stung; the most jarring part was that he’d caught the wire of his headphones on the way down and ripped them out of his ears, and he was left with the shocking ring of silence that came after. Swearing, Louis sat up and punched one of the boxes to let out his feelings. 

“What the fuck?”

Getting onto his knees, he shoved one of the boxes, then spun it around. It had been neatly labeled in black marker, block capitals reading “PROPERTY OF HARRY STYLES: PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.” Underneath, was written in smaller letters, ELECTRONICS.

Frowning, Louis examined another, smaller box, labelled CLOTHES, and then another, which bore the caption BEDDING. With growing alarm, he realized that they had all been taped closed. 

Harry’s bedroom door opened, and he stepped out, carrying another box. His head was turned away, still looking inside the room, as he said, “Dad should be coming to pick my stuff back around eight, so as long as we - ”

He turned and spotted Louis kneeling on the floor, and froze. For a moment, there was silence, then Harry stepped out and the door clicked shut behind him. They stared at each other. Louis had forgotten just how bright Harry’s eyes were, like fireworks. Licking his lips, he bent down and placed one of the boxes on top of the pile. Louis stood up, slowly, hands up as if Harry were an animal that might leap over and bite him if he made any sudden movements.

“What’s all this?” Louis asked, just as Harry said, “What are you doing?”

“I tripped. Sorry. I wasn’t - I just tripped.”

“Right. My fault. Shouldn’t have left it all there.”

“What’s all this for?” Louis asked again.

For a moment, he thought Harry might not answer; he had pressed his lips together and folded his arms. Leaning back against the wall, looking like a complete dick, he did not look at all inclined to respond and Louis was about to give up and leave when Harry said a little stiffly, “I’m leaving.”

“What? Why?”

“You know why. My parents gave me an ultimatum, remember? My grades dropped too far; I have to come home.”

“But...you can’t,” Louis said stupidly.

Harry raised his eyebrows.

“I mean...what happened? You were doing well.”

“You happened,” Harry said flatly. “Like I said. You fucked me up. And no matter how well your study tips worked, I kind of lost my enthusiasm for them after you used me for sex and then dumped my arse.”

“Harry, I - ”

“Save it,” Harry said. “We’ve said everything we’re going to say. I don’t want to talk to you any more, okay? You get what you wanted now. You can hide as much weed in my room as you want. I won’t be here to say no to you any more.”

“Harry - ”

“Don’t touch my stuff,” said Harry, and he turned around and stormed back into his room, slamming the door behind him.

For a moment, Louis just stood dumbly amongst the boxes, in a moment weirdly reminiscent of his first day at uni. Then, he wrapped his headphones around his hand and started walking down the corridor. The ringing in his ears was no longer caused by listening to his music too loudly. He moved more slowly than usual, like he was wading through treacle. An artificial calmness had spread over him, until he got into his room and sat down on his bed and all of a sudden the treacle was in his lungs, solidifying. He was drowning in it, hot, thick stickiness. His breath came in a gurgle like someone sticking a plunger into a blocked drain; grabbing two handfuls of the duvet, he gasped.

Up until that point, Louis had thought that the worst part of breaking up with Harry was having to see, every day, how he’d hurt him, seeing evidence of how much he’d fucked up. The anger and pain in Harry’s eyes, the cold look on his face as he left any room Louis walked into, catching glimpses of his hunched shoulders crossing campus, hearing his door click shut every time Louis went near. Those things were still painful; they tore at him every time, like tearing off a wax strip and repeatedly putting it back on the same spot and ripping it away again. Sometimes the wax began to cool and wouldn’t come off smoothly; it came off in chunks, leaving bits behind, angry red welts and bruises, and sometimes he hadn’t been able to bear it. But the thought of never seeing him again was so much worse.

Even though Harry hated him now, at least he knew that he was alright. That he was still walking and talking and eating and not having panic attacks on the stairs. But those few angry glares and slamming doors were the only communication they had, these days; no more tapping on tables in morse code or sliding messages under doors. Harry didn’t have Facebook, Louis had done his stalking in the early days, and if he’d ever had an account, he’d deleted it when he came to uni - wouldn’t have wanted the distraction. He didn’t have any tumblr or twitter or youtube or any form of social media that Louis had been able to find, and Louis had deleted his number days after they broke up, unable to trust himself not to get drunk and call him and ruin everything by spilling the beans. If Harry left now, Louis would never see him again.

Panic clawed at him, so sharp and sudden that he thought he might throw up. Dizziness washed over him in waves.

He’d take the wax strip. He’d take ten thousand of them. The idea of losing Harry altogether was like replacing the wax with acid, watching it eat through to the bone. 

“Shit,” said Louis, and he threw his ipod down on the bed, ripping the headphones off his fingers, and seconds later he was struggling through the wardrobe into Niall’s room, which was empty.

“Shit,” Louis hissed, and he got out his phone and called him.

The phone rang and rang until it went to answer machine, no personal message, just a woman, calm and clinical.  _ ‘Leave your message after the tone.’  _ Louis hit redial.

The second time, it rang out twice and then Niall rejected the call. For a moment, Louis was so outraged that he forgot his panic. How dare Niall reject him? Then, sense kicked in. Niall would answer his phone anywhere - in lectures, in the shower, Niall didn’t give a shit. Something serious had to have happened if he wasn’t picking up.

_ Third time lucky,  _ Louis thought, and redialled again.

He thought it was going to go to answerphone again, and then halfway through the final ring, Niall picked up and said, “What?”

“What? What? I’ll give you what, don’t you what me, pick up your damn phone! This is an emergency.”

Pause. “What kind of emergency?”

“A fucking catastrophic emergency. Ten on the richter scale. Mayday. Red alert. An emergency of fucking cataclysmic proportions. Where are you?”

Niall sighed; Louis could practically see him rubbing his eyes. “Is it urgent?”

“Niall. What part of ‘it’s a fucking emergency’ says ‘not urgent’ to you?””

“All right, fine, just give me a second,” Niall snapped.

There was a crackle as he put his hand over the speaker, and muffled voices. Straining his ears, Louis could hear rattling and the background bubble of chatter, and Niall saying something to someone. He couldn’t make out the exact words, or the response. Seething, he waited. 

“Listen, Louis,” Niall said, his breath crackling through the speaker. “I’m doing something important. I’m like, really fucking busy. So this is your last chance. This better not be anything stupid. If this is like, you lost your spiderman dvd, or you found a pringle that looks like David Cameron, or there’s a fucking Scooby Doo rerun on TV, then you have one last chance to tell me now so I can hang the fuck up and get back to what I’m doing.”

“Niall,” said Louis. “I’m serious. This is a major thing. Wait, what are you doing that’s so important?”

“I’m on a date, okay!”

Louis held the phone away from his ear and stared at it. “What?”

“Jesus, you want me to scream it into a megaphone or something? I’m on. A date. With a woman.”

“Who? Since when? I thought you weren’t going to get involved with anyone else after Sarah.”

“Shhh!” Niall hissed. “Look, I listened to what you said, okay? About talking to people who know what I’m going through. So I went on a couple of asexual forums and got talking, and eventually I got chatting with this girl, and she’s really nice, okay? And her and me were getting on great until you called up, and now I’ve blown her off for an emergency so I’m serious, I don’t care how much your pringle looks like a fuckwit politician, if this isn’t some next level shit then I am throwing you out through your bedroom window and pissing in your wounds.”

“It’s an emergency, okay? Look, I don’t want to say it over the phone, where are you?”

“Meet me at Nando’s in town, okay? I’ll be waiting outside.”

“Shopping Centre Nando’s or railway station Nando’s?”

Niall scoffed. “Shopping Centre Nando's, obviously. I wouldn’t take my dog to eat in the Nando’s at the railway station.”

“I’ll be there,” said Louis, and hung up.

~*~

He jogged across the road to where Niall was waiting underneath the canopy, hands stuffed in his pockets, glaring at his feet. As Louis approached, his incredulity grew. Having forgone a jacket, Niall was wearing a pressed white shirt, black jeans, and an incredibly pungent smell of aftershave was wafting off him in waves so thick that Louis could taste it. Coughing, he waved his hand in front of his face.

“Jesus. What the fuck is that?”

“What?”

“Are you wearing a  _ shirt _ ?”

“It’s kind of necessary in this kind of weather,” Niall said sarcastically.

“No, but you’re wearing a  _ nice  _ shirt. It looks like you’ve ironed it. And you smell like you fell into a bucket full of Giorgio Armani.”

“I thought you said this was an emergency, not a trip to come and mock my fashion choices. And Liam ironed it,” he added begrudgingly.

“It is an emergency,” said Louis, the stench of Niall’s aftershave almost forgotten. “Harry’s leaving.”

“Shit, why?”

“Apparently his grades went to shit when we broke up, so his parents pulled the trump card. They’ve pulled him out, dragged him back home to commute to a different university and spend all his free time holed up in his room where they can keep an eye on him. Probably want to hook him up to machines that monitor his brain activity to make sure he’s actually taking it all in.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know!” Louis said, and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God. I fucked up. I love him. What do I do? I’ll never see him again after this. I don’t know his address, I don’t know his email address or his phone number, I’d have to hold him at gunpoint before he’d give it to me. If he goes home, I’ll never see him again. The love of my life, Niall! I’ve been so stupid. What have I done? And what do I do now?”

Niall grabbed him. “Listen! Oi! Listen to me.”

Louis blinked.

“It seems to me like you already know what you’ve gotta do. You already know you can’t lose him like this. It’s like you just said; you love him, you want to be with him, you messed up. You finally got your priorities straight. So what are you going to do?”

For a moment, all Louis could do was stand dizzily in the rain with Niall’s hands around his arms being the only thing that made it all real. Like a badly tuned television, he flickered. A snowstorm was raging between his ears, black and white and fuzzy. But then, someone flicked a switch and suddenly he could breathe again.

“I’ve got to stop him.”

“Right,” said Niall. “So we go back there and we stop him. Come on.”

  
He bashed Louis on the back in a way that was presumably meant to be encouraging, but actually felt like he was attempting to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre. Louis staggered, then Niall grabbed him by the wrist and they lurched back out into the rain.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...There's no way I can make this work, it's going to have to be 21 chapters. God dAMN.
> 
> You've got a couple of long chapters ahead of you, folks! Good luck!

They thundered upstairs like men possessed, dripping water everywhere. After losing his bus ticket somewhere around Nando’s, Louis had been forced to jog home, a feat that would have been far easier in his footballing days. Too many nights of fast food and tequila had given him a little bit of a belly and turned him into a slob. He felt like someone was scraping the inside of his lungs with a scalpel and had a stitch in his side that felt like splintered ribs poking through his skin. The only consolation was that Niall was in even more of a state than he was. 

Bursting through the door at the top of the stairs, Louis was about to clamber over the boxes when Harry’s bedroom door opened and out stepped someone who was clearly not Harry. Someone wearing a cardigan, with his hair swept back.

Niall pushed past and Louis had to grab the back of his shirt to stop him from ploughing right through; he yanked him backwards so hard that Niall almost fell. Without pausing, Louis hauled him straight back down the stairs and was heading for the door when Niall seized the banister to stop himself, hanging grimly onto the stairwell.   


“What are you doing?”

“It’s him,” Louis hissed. “It’s Wilmslow. He’s in the room helping Harry back up all his stuff. He’ll never let me near him in a million years.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Oh, God, what now?”

“Calm down,” ordered Niall. “It’s simple. He’s a teacher, right? We just have to pretend to be one of his students and come up with an emergency.”

“I can’t do it, he’ll know it’s me.”

“I’ll do it.”

“No offence, Niall, but you don’t look anything like a politics student. Besides, he must recognize everyone who goes to his lectures by now; it’s been months. He’ll know he’s never seen you. We have to make it convincing. What we need is one of his actual students; they’ll be able to come up with a decent story. Who do we know who’s in his class?”

For a moment, they racked their brains.

“Shit,” said Niall. “The only person I know who studies politics is Sarah.”

Dismayed, Louis stared at him. After everything that had happened, Sarah would rather piss on her own shoes than help either of them. He buried his face in his hands.

“This is a disaster.”

“No it’s not,” Niall said grimly. “I messed things up with Sarah, I won’t let you mess things up with Harry, too. I’ll get her to help you if it’s the last thing I do.” 

Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. Louis started at the caller ID photo; she was smiling, her hair tossed back. She looked nothing like the angry harpy he’d begun to see her as, over the past few weeks. For a moment, he felt a faint glimmer of hope.

Niall hit the call button and then put her on speaker.

When she picked up the phone, Sarah didn’t reply. They could hear her breathing on the other end; apart from that, silence.

“Don’t hang up,” Niall said quickly.

“What do  _ you  _ want?”

“I - ” he swallowed. “Okay. This is...I have no right to ask you this. I know I have no right to ask you for anything. But I need a favour.”

“Screw you!” said Sarah.

“No, no, wait! It’s not for me, it’s for Louis.”

“Screw him too!”

“Sarah, please, wait. I can - I can explain.” Niall rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I messed up, I know I did. I didn’t mean to hurt you. And this isn’t fair...but I need this one thing from you. Just a small thing, to help out a friend, because if you don’t help us then he’s going to have messed something up for himself and I don’t want to see him make the same mistakes I did… I’ve been a coward, I know. And I owe you an explanation. So I’m gonna do you a deal. I know you shouldn’t need one, that you deserve to know why...why we ended like we did. But I need your help in this. So if you help us out now, then I promise you, I will come round and I will explain everything. Everything you want to know. No more hiding.”

All Louis could do was stare at him. As he spoke, Niall had grown steadily paler until his skin was the colour of an old towel, greying from too many washes. The phone shook in his hand. Louis could only imagine how his stomach must have felt, tying itself in knots. In that moment, he had never felt more gratitude for someone. Niall was laying himself bare to a woman who hated him, just to save Louis’ stupid arse. 

“I’m listening,” Sarah said eventually.

Niall let out a shaky breath. “Okay. You take Politics, under a guy named Mike Wilmslow. I need you to contact him - email him, text him, whatever. Say you have an emergency. Make something up, and make it good. Get him to meet you, preferably off campus, and keep him busy for as long as you can. Doesn’t matter what you have to do, we just need a distraction.”

“What’s this all about?” demanded Sarah. “You guys don’t even take politics.”

“That’s why we need you. Please, Sarah. I’m begging. I’m on my fucking knees, here.”

There was a long pause. “Fine,” she said. “Give me a few minutes to make up something good.”

“You’re a lifesaver, thank you, thank you, thank you - ”

“Don’t thank me. You owe me more than ever, now. As soon as this is over, you’re coming straight to me and you’re going to explain yourself, understand? Every single moment. And if you dare to try and wriggle out of this one, I’m going to tell Professor Wilmslow what you made me do and I’m going to find out why, and you will regret it.”

“I’m done lying to you,” said Niall. “We’ll let you know when he’s on the way.”

He hung up, and for a moment just stood staring at his phone, his chest heaving. Louis put a hand on his arm.

“Thank you.”

“He’d better be worth it,” said Niall. “Because I’m outing myself for you. To the one person I was determined was never going to know. So you tell me now, is he worth it?”

“He’s worth it,” said Louis.

“He’d better be.”

They crouched underneath the stairwell until Louis’ ankles started to ache and his muscles cramped him. His legs shook from being curled underneath him for so long. Beside him, Niall ripped at his nails like a wolf tearing meat off a carcass; he tapped the blunt stubs on the floor. After a while, Niall sat down and rested his head against the wall, eyes closed. Louis could hear his shaky breathing. It occurred to him that Sarah might not help them at all, that she might just leave them hanging. Maybe they deserved it. His stomach was a pit of snakes winding themselves into knots, coiling around his intestines and squeezing. At times, he couldn’t breathe. Tension kept shooting through him, making his fingers twitch and his muscles flutter.

Then, footsteps came echoing down the stairwell. 

Louis jerked, dropped to the floor and crawled on his hands and knees until he could see the steps. He watched the feet descend, painfully slowly, as though their owner was afraid of losing his footing. The ugly cardigan came first, in baggy folds, then Louis saw Mike’s face, forehead crinkled. He was on his phone, tapping away at the screen. If he’d looked down, he would have seen Louis lying flat on the floor like an actor in a cheap spy movie. If he’d looked straight ahead, he still might have seen him out of the corner of his eye. As it was, he saw nothing and sailed straight out through the front doors without even a glimpse at where Louis lay shivering on the floor to watch him leave.

The second the doors swung shut behind him, Louis was on his feet, pain screaming through his cramped muscles. For a moment he bobbed up and down on his toes, trying to work the tension out of them, then he gave it up as a bad job. Niall appeared from beneath the stairwell.

“She did it,” he said quietly. “No going back now.”

“Thank you,” Louis said again.

“Just move, Louis, we don’t know how long we’ve got.”

When they reached the top of the stairs, they saw that the boxes had all been lined up neatly against the wall, to keep them from getting in the way. There was a neat passageway between them, leading to Harry’s door, keeping the way ahead clear. Louis’ stomach was spinning like a tornado, yanking all of his organs inside it, making it grow.

“I’ll wait out here and keep watch,” said Niall. “I’ll try to distract him if he comes up, but if I see him, I’ll make a sound like a cawing eagle.”

Louis gave him a disgusted look. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Oh, come on, if we’re gonna do the spy thing we’ve got to do it properly, I’ve always wanted to do the whole lookout thing - ”

“Whatever, fine, you make a noise like a cawing eagle, just stay here and keep watch, okay?” Louis said impatiently, and he reached for the door-handle.

It moved about halfway down and then clunked obstinately. Louis tried the door a few more times, but it was locked. Swearing, he fought the urge to kick it.

“Wardrobe,” Niall said, snapping his fingers. “Go on, hurry! Clock’s ticking!”

Louis rushed down the corridor, into his room and started fighting his way through the wardrobes. It had been weeks since he’d ventured through more than two or three consecutively, and he was surprised by how much he’d forgotten about the experience; the slithery feeling of clothes on his face and the smell of other people’s washing powder; tripping over people’s stuff on the floor, the stuffiness of being inside them and the relief of staggering into the room beyond. One guy’s wardrobe smelt like he’d pissed in it; another had apparently been using his as a laundry basket, piling dirty underwear inside it in a heap as though he expected the dirty laundry fairy to come and wash it for him. 

The further Louis went, the slower he got. Once upon a time he’d fought his way through in seconds, but now, he spent ages wading through laundry, carefully disentangling himself, picking up and repositioning everything he knocked over. He was wasting time, wasting Niall’s sacrifice, but he was afraid to see Harry and to deal with another barrage of abuse. Harry probably wouldn’t give him the time of day, he’d just shove him straight back into the wardrobe and Louis couldn’t blame him. In his place, he’d probably have done the same thing.

For a moment, he paused, face in his hands, to think. 

For weeks, he’d been desperate to speak to Harry properly, and never more so than the moment that he realized he might never have another opportunity. A week ago if he’d been offered the chance to speak to him without the risk of Mike being nearby he’d have ripped off the entire arm of the person who was offering. Yet now he was metres away from the one chance he had, the last chance he had, and he was squandering it. In fact, right then he would have preferred to have Mike catch him setting up a cannabis factory in Harry’s bathroom than to have to face Harry again. He’d made himself quite clear. Louis was the enemy now.

Sliding down the side of the wardrobe wall, he sat on a little heap of shoes and tilted his head back, banging it against the wall. As he did so, a memory came to him, unbidden.

It was New Year's Eve. After they’d snuck away from the party to ring in the new year, listening to drunken yelling down the corridor as the rest of the flat attempted sing “Auld Langs Eyne” without knowing the words, Louis had asked Harry to stay with him. Just for one night. And usually Harry would have disagreed, but he had a few beers down him even though he didn’t like the taste, and it was a brand new year and he was feeling reckless. So he took Louis’ hand and he came through the wardrobe.

It was the first time Louis remembered him doing so, and he hadn’t done it since. As they’d stumbled hand in hand through the wardrobes, falling through people’s lives like portals into a dozen other universes, Harry had looked around with shining eyes, and when he looked at Louis it was as if he was something incredible. No one had ever looked at Louis like that before, like the world had stopped turning on its axis and only he could set it spinning again.

They didn’t make it all the way to Louis’ room at first. Harry tripped over something and lay breathlessly giggling on some stranger’s floor, and after a while of tugging fruitlessly on his hand, trying to move him, Louis gave up and lay down too. 

Most of that night was fuzzy; he remembered it in sensations. Clumsy fingers gripping his own. Messy kisses from numb, lazy lips. But he remembered quite clearly the feeling, as they lay staring up at the glowing plastic stars someone had stuck to the ceiling, that there was something warm and heavy in his chest and that his heart had swollen to accommodate it. For the first time he’d thought that maybe he was falling in love with Harry. That maybe he already had.

Louis was on his feet in seconds and staggering out of the wardrobe. He ran through the final few in about thirty seconds flat and at the final hurdle, tripped over something and went hurtling through the last set of doors, landing flat on his face with an ungainly ‘oof’. For a moment, he stayed face down, sighing against the floorboards, and then he pushed himself up with a groan.

On the other side of the room, Harry had paused with his hands in a cardboard box, filling it with textbooks. They watched each other; Harry was looking at Louis as though he was a rabid dog that might leap at him any moment. Warily, he put the box down on the floor. 

Louis stood up. Something lacy tickled his neck; putting his hand to it, he realized someone’s pink lacy thong had become entangled around his head. It seemed an inappropriate time to laugh, but he couldn’t help but giggle as he extricated himself from the wispy bits of lace and chucked it back into the wardrobe.

“Just like old times,” he said.

Harry didn’t respond. Instead, he folded his arms. 

Uncertain, Louis scratched the back of his neck. He had expected some screaming, maybe yelling, not this cold silence that he didn’t quite know what to do with. Awkward silences had never been his forte; Louis’ usual response to an awkward silence was to try to make it even more awkward, but he had the feeling that Harry wouldn’t take kindly to Louis suddenly saying something like ‘so who wants to hear about the time I got a toothbrush stuck up my bum?’ 

“Er,” he said.

“What do you want, Louis?”

“I have to talk to you.”

Harry sighed; it came out in a sharp huff. “What more can we possibly have to say to each other, Louis? Do you get off on fighting with me or something? Because I’m tired.”

“No, it’s not - I have to explain.”

“I don’t want any explanations from you - God, can’t you just leave me be? I’m leaving, okay? That’s it.”

“No,” Louis said, “it’s not. Because I have something important to tell you, and I think it might change your mind. All I need is for you to listen to me - just for five minutes. Ten, if you want the details.”

“What - ”

“I know I have no right to ask you anything, after what I’ve done, but please...just hear me out. If you ever loved me at all, you’ll hear me out.”

Harry’s face crumpled. “That’s not fair.”

“When did I ever play fair? You know me.”

“Yeah,” Harry said bitterly. “I do.” He sat on the bed. “Make it quick. I’ve got packing to do.”

That caught Louis unawares. Harry had caved far more quickly than he had expected; it hadn’t given him anywhere near enough time to figure out what he was going to say. For a moment, he floundered, mouth popping open and shut like a goldfish, looking at Harry’s deeply unimpressed expression. Then, he decided to do what he always did - just dive in headfirst and hope for the best.

“I lied to you.”

Harry’s lips tightened like someone had pulled a thread tight at the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, okay, that was a bad start, you already know that. God. I’m so shit at this. Okay.” Louis took a deep breath. “You remember the night we met? I burst in through your wardrobe carrying a shit-ton of weed, and I asked if I could hide it in your room, and you said no - ”

“And you flushed it down the toilet. I remember.”

“Well. Not exactly.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. 

“I, er. I didn’t actually flush it. That was a lot of weed! I’d have blocked the toilet. So I hid it under your floorboards.”

“You did _ what _ ?” Harry exclaimed. “You piece of shit! I thought I could smell something, I thought it was just everyone down the hall. My entire room has reeked of weed all year, and it gives me migraines! Oh my God.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, but I panicked. You know how I am under pressure. Look at me now, for fuck’s sake. Just get mad about the weed later, okay? I don’t know how much longer we have.”

“What are you talking about?”

Louis waved a hand. “I had to get a couple of friends to lure Creepy Mike out of the room so that I could talk to you. That doesn’t matter. But I don’t know how long we have until he comes back, so if you could just shut up for a minute and get mad at me when I’ve finished, that would be great.”

“My God, I forgot how annoying you were,” Harry said, but he shut up.

Louis began pacing up and down the room; it was so small that it was barely worth the effort, but it helped in some strange way. Perhaps it was that he wasn’t looking at Harry and feeling guilt and longing and anger surge through him, wanting to punch him for all the horrible things he said, wanting to kiss him because it was Harry and he loved him, wanting to get all the explanations out of the way. Did he want Harry to forgive him, or not? He couldn’t decide. One part of him felt that it would be immensely satisfying if Harry heard him out and then told him he was a coward and a liar and punched him and then spat in his face. As horrible as that would be - and he definitely couldn’t see Harry doing anything of the sort - the thought gave him a perverse sort of satisfaction. Part of him thought that he deserved it. But, he told himself, he needed to get it all out first, the whole sorry story, and then let Harry judge him. So he stopped and turned to face him, looking straight into Harry’s eyes.

“I left it there for...quite a while. Months. You probably know that considering the smell wouldn’t go away… And I swear to you, Harry, I didn’t mean to leave it that long, but people were sniffing around and Niall said it would be safer to leave it be. You didn’t know, so what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you. I know it was a shitty thing to do, you have to believe that I hated myself for it, but like you said, I fuck everything up. So I left it...and I left it. And then one day I thought, you know what, I don’t want to lie any more. I can’t take it back, but I can at least get the fucking weed out of your room, so I went to get it...and I got caught.”

His voice broke, then. Closing his eyes, he had to stop and pull himself together; his throat cracked like a dropped plate. Something had changed in Harry’s expression. Rather than looking angrier, he had softened, his eyes buttery. It made Louis feel even worse.

“He told me I had to break up with you, or he’d turn me in to the police and get me kicked out of uni. I told him to fuck off, of course. Thought he was just talking rubbish, he couldn’t possibly have that much power. Except then my professor called...You remember that essay that I spent hours on? She said someone had reported it as plagiarised. It was my essay, every word of it, but she suspended me from the course and thought I was a liar. I realized he wasn’t bluffing...he would have ruined my life. And I worked so hard for this, I know it seems like I’ve just messed about and wasted my chances, I can’t be like you, I’ve never been responsible and it’s all or nothing and I always choose nothing because it’s simpler. I fuck up. But I realized I didn’t want to fuck up, after all that fighting. Everyone told me I could never do it, and I didn’t want them to be right, so I did what he said and I lied to you and I’m sorry!” 

He broke off, breathless, and had to turn away and bury his face in his hands so Harry wouldn’t see him starting to lose it. What right did he have to cry when he’d messed up, when he’d caused all the pain. Vicious in his self-loathing, Louis scrubbed his eyes and when he was sure he could speak again without choking up, he turned back. Harry was still staring at him, silent, his lips quivering slightly. 

“I do love you,” Louis said. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t believe me, and if you don’t - if you’ve changed your mind, after everything I said. But none of that was real. I don’t think you’re a worthless rich boy, and all the stuff I said about your panic attacks and about using you - that was all bollocks, Harry, he made me say it...No. No, that’s a lie, too. He didn’t make me say it. I wanted to hurt you so you wouldn’t fight, to make it easier for me...I couldn’t bear to drag it out, so I pushed you away. I made you hate me. I didn’t know any other way.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said shakily. “Who caught you? Why would they care so much - about me? About you breaking up with me? To threaten all of that just to split the two of us up?”

Louis just looked at him. He looked like a man with a missing child who had been offered a last glimpse at hope. Closing his eyes, Louis looked away.

“Louis! Who?”

“Mike,” said Louis.

He had tried to do it short and sharp, like tearing off a plaster, but perhaps it would have been kinder to pick away at his delusions first, to slowly scrape at the edges of his hero and peel bits of him away like an old sticker. Harry stared at him, dumbfounded.

“What? No. He wouldn’t. Mike wouldn’t do that… why would he?”

“I’m sorry, I really am.”

“No, but - this has to be a mistake. He wouldn’t do that to me. He cares about me. He’s like family.”

“Family screw us over the fastest.”

“No!” Harry said furiously. “You’re - it can’t -” 

Swearing, he whirled around, seized a lamp off the bedside table and flexed his arm as if to throw, then twitched and put it down again. For a moment he stood with his chest heaving, staring straight through Louis. Then, his face crumpled.

“I don’t believe you! You lied to me; what’s to stop you doing it again? I don’t believe you.”

“Yeah,” Louis said softly. “You do.”

Harry’s glare blazed; for a moment Louis thought Harry might hit him, then something seemed to come loose inside of him. All the anger left his eyes. He sagged and sat down on the bed, staring at the floor.

“Why should I believe you? Mike is like another dad to me. Why would I take your word over his? You hurt me, you lied to me -”

“I love you.”

“Don’t say that,” Harry said, trembling. “Don’t you say that.”

“I’ll say what I like! I’m tired of not saying it! I love you, I FUCKING LOVE YOU and if he doesn’t like it, fuck him, Harry! You don’t want to believe he could do that, but he did. He has… The things he said to me, he spoke to me like I was dirt. Less than dirt. He called me useless, he said I was nothing. He said I wasn’t good enough for you.” 

All of a sudden, he stopped. Tremors were shuddering through Harry’s body and his breathing was beginning to come in rapid gasps. Stilling, Louis drew closer and then Harry made a choking sound and two tears dripped down his cheeks in rapid succession.

“Oh! Oh, God, no, Harry, no, don’t - ”

Rushing over, Louis enveloped him in a hug, but Harry struggled desperately, shoving at his chest with one hand while the other hand scrabbled at the arm that encircled him. For a moment, they fought, Louis trying to calm him while Harry writhed in his grip.

“No, don’t, get off, get  _ off me  _ \- ”

“Sorry, sorry!” Louis said, releasing him.

Like a dog that had been beaten, Harry backed off. Louis held up his hands where Harry could see them and stepped away until he had his back to the wardrobe. It felt like a stand-off, only Louis had no idea which of them had the gun.

“It’s not fair. Why should I believe you? You lied to me, you hurt me. Mike never did that to me. I’ve known him since I was five years old. He bought me a bike and told me how to use a condom. So why the fuck do I believe you over him?”

“Because you love me,” Louis said. “Even after everything, after all we said and did to each other, we tore each other apart with both hands and set each other on fire and yet I still love you, and I think you love me too. Don’t you?”

Silence stretched between them, disturbed only by the hitches in Harry’s breathing and the sound of the occasional car rushing by the window. After the first few seconds, a low ringing began in Louis’ ears, making him dizzy. 

Just as he was beginning to think that he couldn’t bear it any more and might just start shouting again just to break the tension, Harry opened his mouth, and a bizarre noise came drifting through from the corridor outside. It sounded like a chicken being stepped on. Perplexed, Harry turned to stare at the door, and the noise sounded again, this time echoing slightly, as if the person making it had cupped their hands around their mouth.

“Shit,” Louis said. “That’s the signal.”

“What?”

“The signal, Mike’s outside - I have to go - ”

Lunging for the wardrobe, Louis fumbled to open it and only stopped at the sound of Harry calling after him.

“You’re really going to do this to me again? What is wrong with you? You burst in here and tell me you love me and a man I’ve known since birth is a blackmailer and a liar, and then the second trouble shows up you run off again? Talk about mixed messages. You’re not just messing with my head, you’re throwing my brain into a mixing bowl! Do you love me or not, Louis?”

He was expecting an ultimatum, but he didn’t get one. Instead, Harry just stopped. Hanging his head, he stepped back, waiting. Defeated. Clearly he was waiting for Louis to jump straight back into the wardrobe. If he was honest with himself, Louis was expecting it, too. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him to move; Mike could come in at any second and he didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when he came back, lest Mike tear him down - but.

Taking a shaky breath, Louis withdrew his foot and closed the wardrobe, careful not to bang the doors. Anxiety settled sickeningly in the pit of his stomach; there was a lump in his throat like a wad of chewed up food, and he swallowed several times but couldn’t dislodge it. Outside, there was some sort of commotion going on. He could hear raised voices, but no words. On the other side of the room, Harry had slumped and turned his face to the floor. His eyes were still closed. Waiting for Louis to play the coward and flee.

Louis exhaled, puffing out his cheeks, and then drew himself up to his full height. Something about not being slouched made him feel braver, physically and metaphorically taller. He crossed the room in two long strides and reached out to cup Harry’s cheek; without opening his eyes, Harry tilted his head into the touch and his eyelids fluttered as Louis’ thumb grazed his cheekbone, lighter than a butterfly landing for a split second on the curve of his cheek. Still, he didn’t open his eyes, just leaned into Louis’ hand with a look on his face like a man who had been offered everything he had ever wanted, but was afraid to take it. 

As for Louis, he felt like he was standing at the edge of a precipice and looking down at where Harry waited at the bottom. There were swords at his back and sharp rocks below, and a side route that he could easily take, burrowing like a rabbit into the labyrinthine passages within the walls, escaping the rabid creatures at his heels. Instead, he jumped.

“Okay,” he said.

Harry’s eyes flew open as if Louis had slapped him, his lips parting slightly with astonishment. 

“Okay?”

“I’m here,” he said, and his hand slipped down Harry’s shoulder, caressing his arm, fingers encircling his wrist and then he took his hand and they turned to face the door. 

There was a scraping, a rattling as someone fought with the lock, and then the door burst open, angry voices coming in from the corridor beyond. 

“I’m serious, mate, I’m fucking dying here - I think I’ve got like, appendicitis or some shit. You have to help me, I need a hospital!” A groan, Oscar-worthy, in Louis’ opinion, that sounded like the kind of noise someone might make if they were being fucked in the arse with a knife. Then a thump, as Niall dropped to his knees. “Argh! My appendix! Please! Call me an ambulance!”

“The only thing that’s wrong with you is a black tongue,” Mike said coldly. “Now get out of my way.”

Harry’s grip on his fingers flexed and suddenly tightened, crushingly painful like trapping your fingers in a door. Sucking in a breath, Louis nevertheless did not let go.

When Mike entered the room, he seemed to bring with him all the cold air from the corridor beyond and simultaneously suck all of the air out of Louis’ lungs in a vicious tug. He was left gasping, suddenly freezing cold, with only Harry’s fingers reminding him what warmth was, his hand pulsing in his excruciating grip. Immediately, Mike paused, his sharklike eyes flitting from Harry to Louis, as though deciding which of them to eat first. Then, without looking away, he closed the door behind him with a snick, cutting off Niall’s groaning. It didn’t make the room any smaller; it felt like he’d sealed them inside a freezer. Something tightened in Louis’ stomach. He resisted the urge to back off. 

Mike’s stare settled on Louis, tearing at him like teeth. With Harry at his side, he felt able to stand up straight and look back as though that gaze didn’t feel like clammy fingers, prune-like from frigid water, groping at his bare skin. Instead, he fixed Mike with his best contemptuous look, the one that he usually reserved for traffic wardens and homophobes.

“Louis,” said Mike. “How unpleasant to see you.”

“Oh, please. The displeasure is all mine.”

A strange smile twisted the corner of Mike’s mouth, like a thread being pulled tight and then slackened again. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“Consider it terminated,” Louis said. Working his fingers free from Harry’s, he slipped an arm around his waist and drew him closer with a jerk. Against him, he could feel Harry sagging, his legs wobbling. “Although I don’t think ‘agreement’ is quite the right word. That would imply that we both had a say in the decision. As I recall, I told you to fuck off the first time around.”

“And then you changed your mind.”

“You changed it for me,” Louis retorted, “and not very well, obviously. I’m still here.”

“I take it you still remember what I told you was going to happen if you didn’t accept my offer.”

“Stop it!” Harry exploded. “It’s true, isn’t it? You threatened him! How could you do that to me? I told you everything, about how happy he made me, how much he made things easier to bear, I told you every little detail and you used it against me! You could have ruined his life, everything he worked for, and for what?”

“Wait, you told him?” Louis demanded, pushing him away. He rounded on him. “Harry, you promised me you wouldn’t! I asked you a million times and you always said you hadn’t told anyone! You were the one who told  _ me  _ not to tell anyone, you drummed it into me every day!”

Harry turned to him, stricken, but Mike was already interrupting.

“Don’t be so naive, Harry, I didn’t ruin anything. It would never have worked! Look at the two of you! Harry, you’re a hard worker, you’ve got a future ahead of you, you could make something of yourself. Do you really want to lumber yourself with some starving actor who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together, just for some silly crush? Wake up, Harry, the real world isn’t that kind. Your Louis is going to end up selling used cars on TV or doing porn or even worse, in some unqualified desk job or at a supermarket, and I won’t see you go the same way.”

“You stuck-up prick,” Louis snarled. “Those are good jobs, decent, hardworking people do those jobs - ”

“Decent, hardworking people, yes, but that doesn’t sound much like you, does it, Louis?”

It was like being slapped and struck by lightning all at once; all Louis could do was stare at him, apoplectic with rage, sizzling with it all the way to his toes. Anger shot through him in bursts, the urge to lunge at Mike and shake him like a terrier shaking a rat.

“I did you a favour,” Mike said coldly. “Your grades have shot up since the two of you stopped seeing one another. I’ve spoken with your professor. Before, you were turning up to her lessons drunk and stoned and barely capable of sitting straight in your seat without falling out of it. You’ve been coming on in leaps and bounds; you might actually have a chance at getting this degree. You’ve finally grown up.” He looked at Harry, eyes flashing. “And I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Harry, all this moping about, but you’d have snapped out of it soon enough, a few more weeks and you’d have been your old self again. It’s your fault,” he told Louis, “putting ridiculous ideas into his head, he’s wanted to be a lawyer since he was five years old and he never wanted anything different until you showed up.”

“When he was five years old he didn’t even know what a lawyer was!” Louis spat. “How was he ever supposed to want to be anything else when that was all that was expected of him?”

“Shut up!” yelled Harry. “I don’t need either of you to speak for me, okay?  _ Harry wants, Harry doesn’t want, _ I don’t  _ know _ what I want, all right? All I know is I’m sick of hearing other people make my decisions for me!”

“Then maybe you should make smarter decisions,” Mike said coolly. “You’re at university, Harry, you’re too old to be acting like a petulant child, moping over a silly crush. I shouldn’t have let this go on for as long as it did, and that was my mistake. But it’s time to grow up, and move on.”

For a moment Harry stood and looked at him, a red flush staining his cheeks and his hands balling into fists. He was a bath full of scalding water coming to the brim, about to overflow and soak them all. Louis wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back the deluge, was waiting for Harry to start yelling; he knew he was capable of it, had felt some of that rage directed towards himself and didn’t much want to witness it again. They were dancing on the cusp of a precipice with a horrendous drop on either side, one into choppy black waters that wanted to drag them under, and the other straight into a bonfire. Either Harry would implode, all of his anger drawn in like blood seeping from a wound in reverse - or he would explode, and take the whole building down with him. Louis tensed.

The moment passed. With a herculean effort, Harry breathed in and then forced it out again in an exhale that was only slightly unsteady. Then, he squared his shoulders and looked Mike straight in the eyes.

He stared for long enough to make Louis uncomfortable, Mike starting to squirm, refusing to break the eye contact even as colour rose in his own cheeks. Without speaking, Harry reached out and intertwined his fingers with Louis’. They were slightly sweaty. That was a relief, to know that the hardness on the outside only went so deep. Harry’s fingers flexed reassuringly around his.

“Louis, are you coming?” he said, still staring at Mike.

“Yeah,” said Louis. “Okay.”

Without further ado, Harry tugged him into the corridor beyond and led him towards the stairwell, like a parent guiding their toddler across the road. It felt strange to allow Harry to manhandle him so; usually it was Louis dragging Harry around, almost pulling his arm out of its socket, but he sensed that Harry needed this, to show Mike who was boss. If he was honest with himself, Louis wasn’t in any fit state to be making decisions, not after having stared Mike right in the eyes again. He was still trying to shake off the slimy sensation that came of being within the man’s immediate vicinity; speaking with him felt uncannily like taking a bath in a barrel full of anchovies.

Niall was nowhere to be seen, having long since given up howling at the door with a crippling case of imaginary appendicitis. Presumably he’d gone to face the music, to finally tell Sarah what he ought to have told her as soon as he’d realized how. Still, Louis had no right to condemn anyone for keeping things from their significant other. After all, he’d only just hashed things out with Harry, had peeled away all the lies that had cloaked their relationship from the beginning, all of Harry’s delusions that he was brave and decent and honest, wiped away all the fresh lies he’d fed him in order to push him away. Then, he’d scrubbed the raw, naked skin left behind with wire wool until every touch felt unbearable, an abrasive intrusion, Harry’s eyes on him like nails raking down his skin. It made him shiver, but in the best way. He knew Harry better now than he had before, now that they’d torn shreds off each other and lied to each other and hurt each other and as painful as it was to look at him with all of those illusions stripped away, it was better. Honest. 

He’d finally taken off the rose-tinted glasses, seen Harry for who he was - a person, just like Louis. It felt like looking at a stranger...but the most beautiful stranger Louis had ever seen.

They didn’t speak, as they walked. Louis was afraid to shatter the fragile quiet between them, as if it were a pane of glass that had splintered with a network of cracks and just one tap would send it crashing to their feet in a shower of glass snowflakes. They got the bus, Harry paying for both of them, and when he spoke to ask the bus driver for their tickets, the sound of his voice made Louis jump. Soft as it was, it sounded strange. Felt even stranger, sliding across his skin, weirdly sensual. This stranger’s voice. His Harry, and yet, not.

The strange silence continued on the bus, the hum of the engine and the buzz of people’s conversations in the background only seeming to perpetuate their quietude. A teenager in front of them was listening to music just a bit too loudly, the tinny sound of it seeping through his headphones. Towards the back, a toddler, complaining whilst a frazzled mother tried to quiet it. Louis took the window seat and rested his forehead against the glass, even when the vibrations gave him a headache every time the bus stopped. He kept holding Harry’s hand, their interlocked fingers resting in his lap, as Harry stared off into the distance apparently contemplating something deeply important. Louis wondered what he was thinking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

It was only when Harry led him into the train station and bought two single tickets to Holmes Chapel that the growing ball of unease in Louis’ belly suddenly stretched out and took up twice the space it had before, crushing a number of his internal organs. He suddenly felt very sick.

“Er, babe,” he said. “Where are we actually going?”

“You said you’d come with me,” Harry said, turning to him with the tickets clasped in his free hand. “You never asked where we were going. You just...said yes.”

He seemed...confused. Well. Louis wasn’t entirely sure himself what had made him say it. A mixture of cowardice - desperate to get away from Mike, to defuse Harry before he went off, to dive back into the wardrobe - and courage, the urge to stand by Harry and defend him, and to tell Mike that he was a massive cunt, and to disprove his insistence that Louis was disloyal and a user and everything he’d pretended to be. 

Of course, he didn’t say any of this. He couldn’t vocalise most of it anyway, it was just a jumble of confusion in his head and a weird heavy feeling in his stomach, and wanting to be wherever Harry was and never stop holding his hand. So he just said simply, “I’d go anywhere with you.”

Harry’s thumb skimmed Louis’ knuckles; in a startlingly old-fashioned gesture, he swept Louis’ hand up to his mouth and kissed it, a gentle pop of lips on skin that made Louis’ heart lurch like a pirate ship ride at a theme park. 

“I love you.”

“And I love you,” Louis said.

“Good,” said Harry, and he gave a smile so blinding that it dazzled Louis for a moment and he realized that this was no stranger, this was just his Harry with all of his expectations destroyed. Just because Louis didn’t know every inch of him as he thought he had, didn’t mean he was any different from the boy who had cried over a couple of Lush bath bombs and kissed Louis’ hand like they were in the eighteenth century, and had panic attacks in the bathroom over a law degree he wasn’t sure he wanted to do any more. 

“Good,” Louis echoed.

“Good,” Harry said again. “Let’s go home.”

They headed onto the platform to catch the train.


	20. Chapter 20

The train journey in itself was far more comfortable, the greenery and a hundred houses flashing past the window too fast to latch onto, Harry’s eyes flickering rapidly as they caught and released every single image like catching butterflies in a net and letting them go in the very same instant. Night was falling, dimness drawing in and turning the sky the colour of a healing bruise, only a few exhausted commuters still riding the train at that hour, buried in books or tapping away at laptops or listening to music through their headphones. 

Louis watched Harry the whole time. Something had come loose within him. Although his lower lip still bore the omnipresent imprint of his two front teeth, a red line scored into the flesh, he hadn’t bitten it since they’d gotten on the train. This time, it was Harry’s turn to rest his head against the window and the longer it rested there, the more relaxed he seemed, his shoulders loosening. Rarely had Louis seen him like this, unpicking the knots that always seemed to stretch him so thin, and it set something warm glowing in his chest. Although he knew that they needed to have the inevitable conversation, he didn’t want to destroy the moment, the feeling that Harry was finally content, not stressed about working or keeping their secret or fulfilling people’s expectations. So he stayed silent, hand stretched across the table to hold Harry’s, playing with his fingers, and they stayed so until there were a series of chimes over the speaker system and a plasticky female voice said smoothly “This train will shortly be arriving at Holmes Chapel. This service is calling at Holmes Chapel, Goostrey, Alderly Edge, Wilmslow, and Manchester Piccadilly. Please ensure that you take all of your belongings with you when departing the train. Thank you.”

Getting to his feet, Harry pulled Louis down towards the end of the coach.

“Babe, where are we going?” Louis protested. “And can we go there more slowly? You’re ripping my arm off.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, slowing down ever so slightly and then surging forwards again, practically throwing Louis onto the platform. 

He staggered over his own feet and then struggled to catch up as Harry dodged neatly around a couple of people toting enormous pull-along suitcases large enough to hide a body in. Then, Harry pulled him towards the wheelchair ramp, ignoring the staircase at the other end of the platform, and they practically sprinted to the top. To Louis, already breathless and with his arm practically dangling out of its socket, it felt like trying to run up Mount Kilimanjaro with weights in his shoes. A stitch was exploding across his ribs like a gunshot wound.

“Harry! Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Easy,” Harry said. “I’m taking you on the grand tour. Holmes Chapel is very picturesque. So I’m gonna take you for a wander round. See what it’s all about, where I grew up and that.”

“That’s really nice, Harry, but is now really the best time? Weren’t you supposed to be going home tonight? Your parents will be worried about you.”

“I’m a grown man,” Harry said, “and I haven’t been to the playground in three years. Being a grown up isn’t all taxes and bills, you know. Sometimes you’ve got to buy a whole cake and eat it by yourself, and regret it deeply ten minutes later. The shops will all be closed by now, so I’m going to do the next best thing and have someone push me round on the roundabout until I get so dizzy that I can’t stand up. Deal?”

“Um,” said Louis. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea..”

Harry’s eyebrows flew up. “I’m sorry? You’re telling  _ me  _ something is a bad idea? I’m literally asking you to go to the park with me and go on the roundabout and the swings and get stuck on the slides because we’re adults and our arses won’t fit, and you’re telling me it’s a bad idea? Didn’t you use up your entire student loan one month on buying so much ice cream that no one else in the flat could get anything into the freezer?”

“It wasn’t my  _ entire  _ student loan,” Louis objected.

“Come on, Louis. I’m sick of being boring. When has it ever got me anywhere? Stress headaches and bad posture and I’ll probably start prematurely greying if I look at another law textbook ever again! I fucked off my parents’ best friend and ditched him and I reckon we’ve got about half an hour before my phone starts blowing up with them wanting to know where I am and make sure I haven’t been chopped into pieces and shoved into a suitcase by a mad axe murderer, because they’re good people and they care about me. I don’t want to deal with that today. I want to go to the fucking playground.” He looked Louis in the eyes, and in spite of his words, there was a quiver of uncertainty there, as if he were asking for permission.

Louis had always been the enabler. Whenever people were nervous or said no or tried to remind him of the rules, Louis had always been able to whine and wheedle and give a gentle nudge - or a good shove - when required. And, well. When was the last time he’d been to a playground without little kids in tow, without having to sprint around shoving a roundabout laden with shrieking kids, the mechanisms groaning after years of abuse? Without his sisters squabbling over who Louis should push on the swing, whose turn it was, when their turn was over? Without having to kiss a scraped knee or reprimand another kid who wouldn’t let one of his sisters have a go on the equipment, or tell off some loitering kids who were too old for the playground and insisted on lingering anyway, intimidating the younger ones? 

Fuck it. “Go on, then,” said Louis. “Show me.”

Harry lit up like a bonfire.

~*~

“I used to work there,” Harry said, pointing. “I worked in a bakery.”

His breath painted the air with curls of smoke like gauze, delicate puffs that Louis wanted to catch. Looking with interest at the building, Louis tried to imagine a younger Harry pottering around the store with an apron and a hairnet on, serving cookies and muffins, and couldn’t help but grin at the image.

“Cute,” he said. “I bet all the old ladies loved you.”

“Of course they did. What’s not to love? God, I loved working there. I used to eat all the burned biscuits and bread and throw some of it to the birds. Then I’d take home a load of cakes and biscuits every night. Shame to waste them. Everyone used to moan because I’d come home smelling like bread and making them all hungry. Mum and Gem reckoned they each put on about twelve pounds while I was working there. They liked it when I worked at Lush better. I still smelt good, but I didn’t end up feeding them constantly and they got cheap gifts for everyone whenever they wanted. On the whole, Lush was far better for my love handles.” 

“You don’t have love handles,” Louis scoffed.

“Not any more,” Harry said solemnly. 

Holmes Chapel was not at all what Louis had expected. It was silly of him, he knew, to have thought it, but he’d always visualised Holmes Chapel as an imposing city full of cathedrals and elegant mansions, spires pointing towards the sky, disgustingly rich people trundling through the streets in their antique cars, which would gleam like pennies, or walking snooty looking dogs down the pavement. He had also imagined clouds perpetually pulled tight overhead, the whole city cast into darkness.

In reality, Holmes Chapel was a sweet, sleepy little town, practically deserted at this time of the evening. Trees threw pale shadows onto the pavement, the wind rustling in the leaves. Louis looked at the shopfronts and the litter on the pavement - less than he was used to seeing at home, admittedly - and the perfectly ordinary cars parked against the kerb, and he laughed. Surprised, Harry glanced across at him; Louis grinned back, a little giddy with the normalcy of it all. He felt like he’d wandered into a vampire’s lair, expecting to find coffins and cobwebs and bodies drained of blood, and instead found the vampire lounging on the couch watching Netflix. 

“What?” said Harry.

Louis shook his head. “It’s just so...normal. I dunno what I was expecting. Guard dogs, maybe. Electric fences. Possibly a moat.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Harry said solemnly. “I think one of my next door neighbours has a Rottweiler, if that helps.”

“That’s just not good enough,” Louis told him. “I have  _ standards, _ you know. I hope you realized that you’ve crushed my dreams. Crushed them! How does it feel?”

“Strangely satisfying. Like popping a spot.”

“You disgust me,” said Louis. “Go on, then, tell me some juicy tidbits. I’m expecting some major nostalgia. Show me where your dad taught you to ride a bike and where you had your first kiss. Tell me how you lost your virginity, I’m dying to know. Ooh, I know! Show me where you went to school so I can imagine a teeny baby twelve year old Harry toddling along with his top button done up, passing chewy to his mates under the desk.”

Harry laughed. “I stopped doing my top button up about two weeks into year seven. My first kiss… hmm. It was in a field. The whole place reeked of cow shit. She was a cousin, but...hard times.”

Louis stopped walking to stare at him, his mouth dangling open. For a moment, Harry gazed back completely seriously, giving him a slow blink like a cat - then he cracked up, his laugh bouncing off the houses around them. Sighing, Louis folded his arms.

“I hate you.”

“Your face,” Harry said delightedly. “Nah, it was with a guy. Behind the school bike sheds. I was fourteen, I think. He was cute. Closeted, unfortunately, but what can you do? What about yours? I can imagine there was glitter involved.”

“Funnily enough, mine  _ was  _ a girl,” Louis said. “My mate, Hannah. Then my more-than-mate. She was kind of my girlfriend. For almost a year, actually. I feel bad about it now, cos my heart wasn’t in it - I mean, I liked hanging out with her, playing XBox and pretending to do homework and hanging out at the shops, but I didn’t like making out with her that much and I didn’t get much out of having sex with her either. I got hard, but when you’re fifteen you get hard if someone looks at you funny, never mind anything else. So I finally had sex with her and then had sex with a lot of boys to get it out of my system and it wasn’t always very nice, but I figured out I don’t like minge and Hannah has another boyfriend now, who if I say so myself, is very cute. So at least it was a happy ending.”

“Wait,” Harry said, “wait, your first kiss was a girl?”

“Well, yeah,” Louis said defensively, “not all of us knew we were gay since we were eleven. I was fairly certain, I just felt that I should test the theory. Hence, Hannah. I was an alright boyfriend. I even looked it up on Google to find out what I was meant to do to her. She seemed to enjoy it, I guess.”

“You had  _ sex  _ with a girl? What was it like?”

He considered. “Wet,” he said truthfully. “And it took less prep than fucking a guy. It was alright, I guess. But on the whole I prefer dick up the bum. Not necessarily my bum. But just a bum. And not a girl’s bum.”

“You had sex with a girl!” Harry crowed, apparently delighted by this information. “You’re gay as glitter. How did it work? I’m amazed she didn’t figure it out. Maybe you really are a good actor.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” Louis demanded. “I’m a great actor! I’ve been acting since birth.”

“Yeah, I know, I was kidding. You are a good actor. I’m not a good lawyer. I’m not good at anything,” Harry said, suddenly dejected, and he plonked himself down on a nearby wall, hunching over. His hair fell across his forehead and cast a shadow across the ground.

“Hey,” said Louis. “None of that. You’re great at loads of things. You’re a great kisser. Great in bed. A great boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but none of that looks good on a CV, unless I wanna be a kissogram.”

“That’s not all,” Louis said, and he gently lifted Harry’s chin to make eye contact with him. “Oi. Look at me. You’re a great singer. An amazing cook. You’re really good at making people happy and talking to people. And the things you can do with nail polish takes my fucking breath away.”

Looking up, Harry managed a very wobbly smile. Louis watched his Adam’s apple jolt as he swallowed, and suddenly his hand was in Louis’, surprising him. The evening was growing chilly around them, so that the warmth of Harry’s fingers seemed more noticeable than usual. For a moment, Louis allowed him to sit and struggle with the smile that didn’t quite want to fit on his face, then he sat up and managed a slightly more natural one. It still didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was good enough for Louis. 

Reaching out, he put a hand to Harry’s chin and lifted it slightly, making Harry look at him properly. Out of instinct, Harry tried to pull away, ducking his head, but Louis tutted until Harry met his gaze.

“Chin up, chuck,” he said. “It’ll all work out okay.”

For a moment, he felt wise - like someone who had lived and worked a dozen shitty jobs and raised a platoon of kids, suffered and been happy, been married twice, and had wrinkles around his eyes. Then, with an abrupt jolt, he came back to himself. Him? Louis Tomlinson, an adult? Unthinkable! For a moment, he’d sounded like his mother - and whilst his mother was one of the coolest people he knew, she was also over the age of thirty, and that just would not do. Suddenly, he was seized by the urge to eat a whole ice cream in one bite, bellow ‘BOGEYS’ in the middle of a library, or something else suitably childish. Horrified, Louis stared at his reflection in Harry’s eyes and thought about how much he looked like an alien.

“You look like you’re having an existential crisis,” Harry said.

Louis focused on Harry himself rather than his own face in Harry’s irises, realizing he had rather rudely been using him as a mirror. “I just realized I’m turning into my mother.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” Harry said solemnly. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

“Oh, you will,” Louis said. “She’ll envelop you in a whirlwind of hugs and baking. She loves meeting my boyfriends and embarrassing them. If you can withstand a couple of hours of her teasing you, you’ve passed the test. Bring wine; it’s always a good icebreaker.” Leaping up, he hauled Harry to his feet. “Now! Enough of that, this kind of talk is far too sensible for my liking - I seem to recall you mentioned a playground?”

~*~

The playground was not like the one Louis used to take his sisters to in Doncaster, but it was not different in the ways that he had expected. It was an average sort of playground; blobs of gum ground into the tarmac, rust on the roundabout, and someone had folded one of the swings over so that the chains had tangled and the seat dangled mere inches from the bar across the top. As soon as they entered, Harry crossed the playground and began untwisting the chains; Louis rolled his eyes and went to have a go on the slide, and abruptly realized that it was far smaller than he had expected, the very top of it reaching his collarbones. 

“Harry, there’s something wrong with this playground. It’s too small.”

“No, we’re just too big,” replied Harry, still focused on disentangling the chains of the swing. Louis would have been the little shit who twisted all the other swings up to match and pissed everyone off. 

“We’ll see about that,” he said, and abruptly scrambled up the slide and tried to go down it.

He didn’t get stuck - it was wide enough that he slid down without difficulty, soaking his arse as he slipped through a large damp patch on the slide that made him swear profusely - but he barely slid at all before his heels hit the ground and he was left with a saddening, slightly dissatisfying feeling, like waking up on Christmas morning the first year you know that Santa isn’t real. Going through the motions just didn’t feel the same any more.

A peal of laughter echoed across the playground; startled, Louis looked up, only to find Harry perched on the newly unravelled swing, laughing at him. Louis frowned, which only made Harry laugh harder, rocking the swing, his heels skimming the ground. He had to hold his knees up at a strange angle to keep his feet off the floor at all, so that he looked like a strange, gangly bird. 

“What?” Louis asked, sounding somewhat more petulant than he would have liked.

“Nothing,” Harry said, amusement colouring his tone. He hopped off the swing, crossed over to the roundabout and plonked himself down, his legs bent absurdly to fit through the framework. “Come and push me.”

“Rude,” said Louis. “You’re worse than my little sisters; at least they know how to say please.” 

But he crossed over obligingly and grabbed the frame of the roundabout, cringing at the chill of it against his palms. It had been a long time since he’d done this, and a wave of nostalgia hit him for a moment before he steadied himself and started to push, bracing himself against the frame.

The roundabout groaned and its mechanisms made an unpleasant grinding sound as he pushed, but after a few turns it started to warm up and turned more easily, with only the faintest of squeaks that was almost drowned out by Louis’ grunts - mostly for show; Harry was lighter than he’d expected, certainly lighter than four giggly girls, whom he was used to pushing, although the two eldest were too old for roundabouts now. Soon it would be time for the second set of twins to be riding on the play equipment. 

He started to speed up, converse slipping slightly on the tarmac, and almost lost his grip when he glanced at Harry and saw the sheer ecstasy on his face, a huge grin sprawled across his cheeks. Shaking his head, he lowered his gaze and focused on pushing harder, until he was running, starting to get breathless, and Harry was just a streak of dark hair in his peripheral vision, the asphalt and the chipped paint of the roundabout all blurring together. He ran and ran until the roundabout threatened to outrun him, gathering too much momentum, and then he jumped up onto the roundabout and threw his head back as it spun and for a moment the world was just a blur of darkness, the breeze on his neck and the chill of the metal biting at his fingers.

Then the roundabout slowed to a stop and Louis was hit by a wave of dizziness so intense that he had to hang over the frame and take deep breaths to try and feel less like a hamster in a washing machine. 

Harry’s laughter made him look up, struggling to focus; he was swaying violently before Louis’ eyes, but he could just about make out Harry’s grin. 

“Now that was fun!” 

Louis just clung to the bars trying to convince the contents of his stomach to stay put, the hairs on his arms prickling. He managed to lift his head and focus, and the goofy smile on Harry’s face made him laugh, a little breathlessly, but encouraged by managing to do even that without vomiting or falling over, he sat up properly and found himself smiling right back, a comically wide beam.

Then all of a sudden the smile slid off Harry’s face and he became so somber that Louis wondered if he’d done something wrong, a chill stealing through him. Hesitantly, he went to touch Harry’s hand, then decided against it. In the darkness, Harry’s eyes looked grey.

“I don’t think I want to be a lawyer any more,” he said.

It was a shock to hear it, and Louis got the sudden urge to stand up and cheer - but he didn’t think that would be a very supportive thing to do, and Harry might change his mind later, and that would make things a tad awkward. So instead, he reached out to take Harry’s hands across the roundabout, like they were on a date in a restaurant and they were holding hands across the table.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“I - wha- ?” Harry said, his forehead furrowing.

“I’m proud of you,” Louis said. “It can’t be easy, changing your mind about something you’ve been certain about for pretty much your whole life. I’m proud of you. And whatever you decide to do next - even if you change your mind again and decide you do want to be a lawyer - I’ll support you. You know that, right?”

The look on Harry’s face as he said that was so beautiful that he could hardly bear it. Battling an almost painful urge to kiss it away, aching from the sheer love in Harry’s gaze, Louis forced himself to meet it head on. He tried to smile, but his mouth wobbled and couldn’t manage it; he was so overcome that he lifted Harry’s hand and kissed it instead, watching Harry’s eyelids dip and his mouth drop slightly open in response. 

Breathing out rather shakily, Louis lowered his hand again and tried to remember how to breathe. It felt like he’d been standing on a cloud and breathing in too-thin air. 

“So, what  _ do  _ you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said gleefully. “Isn’t that great? I haven’t the foggiest!”

His happiness was infectious. “That’s great, babe,” Louis said, smiling in spite of himself, even though he thought it sounded rather terrifying. There had been a point in time when he too hadn’t had any idea what he wanted to do with his life, when his panic attacks had made a career in acting seem impossible. To him, it had felt frightening, like being lost at sea without a life preserver, or trapped in a maze with no way out or middle. But he could see how, to Harry, who had been building up to a law career for his whole life with no other viable options offered to him, might find that freeing. Frightening, but freeing. “You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. Why worry?”

“Yeah,” Harry said happily, staring off into the distance. “Yeah…” His gaze snapped back onto Louis, and a smile spread across his face. “But you know what I want to do right now?”

“Wh - ” Louis said, and then Harry lunged forwards and captured his mouth in a kiss so ferocious that it scared him a little.

So shocked was he by this assault of the mouth that he forgot how to kiss for a moment and just gaped into Harry’s mouth, which moved insistently against his without seeming to notice or care that Louis was doing his very best goldfish impression against his lips. Harry’s hand rested against the small of his back and drew him closer, and Louis tried to be a bit less useless, his hands fluttering as he struggled to decide where best to put them. Eventually, he settled a bit uncertainly with one on the waist and the other clinging to one of the bars of the roundabout seat to support himself. That was when Harry deepened the kiss, licking filthily into Louis’ mouth, which was not at all what he’d been expecting. With a sound that came out like ‘umph’, Louis tried to detach himself and in response Harry tightened his grip like an octopus, winding his long arms around him. 

Louis kissed him back for a while, hoping to placate him, but rather than drawing back, Harry was becoming more immersed in the kissing and trying to turn it into a full-on snogging session, which Louis might have been up for, if they hadn’t been sat on a freezing cold roundabout in the middle of the night, with the chill of the metal seeping through his jeans and the hairs on his arms standing up fierce as needles. Deciding it wasn’t worth the frostbite on his arse cheeks, Louis lifted the hand he’d been using to balance himself and went to gently push Harry back, but Harry surged forwards, throwing him off balance and Louis fell backwards with a jolt of pain lancing through the hand he threw out to catch himself, which slipped straight through the bars and hurt like fuck. 

Apparently unaware that he’d almost broken Louis’ wrist with his aggressive snogging, Harry lurched even further forwards and practically dipped him, like they were dancing, his thumb skimming across the sliver of bare skin at Louis’ hip where his t-shirt had slipped. At that point two things happened in rapid succession; firstly, Louis’ cock started to stir slightly, and secondly, his shirt rode up at the back so that when the skin of his back hit the icy metal frame of the roundabout, he yelped and catapulted forwards so quickly that he almost slammed his forehead right into Harry’s nose.

“Harry!” 

“What?” said Harry anxiously. “Sorry, did I hurt you?”

“I am not getting off with you in the middle of a children’s playground.”

“Why not? There are no kids around.”

“Because it’s fucking weird,” Louis said heatedly. “I’m not spunking on a fucking roundabout. That’s like wanking off on a teddy bear. It’s creepy.”

Harry frowned. “Yeah, well, okay, when you say it like that…” He brightened. “It’s okay, there’s a pub just around the corner, we can use the toilets,” and he grabbed Louis’ hand and pulled him to his feet.

“I beg your pardon?” Louis said, outraged. 

Harry blinked. “The...the pub? Toilet?”

“I’m not getting fucked in a pub toilet, what the fuck do you think this is?”

“Oh, come on, Louis, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“There’s nothing adventurous about catching chlamydia off a toilet seat,” Louis said primly. 

“But I’ve never had sex in a toilet before,” Harry whined, sounding uncannily like a spoilt child.

“Yeah, well I have, and it’s nowhere near as illicit and naughty as it sounds, all right? It’s just gross. There’s nothing hot about getting fucked in a tiny room that reeks of cheap bleach and piss, not daring to touch anything in case you get an STI and wondering how many other randy bastards have fucked in there before you have. We’re not going there, all right?”

With an expression like the one he wore when reading his law textbooks, Harry said, “But I thought...since you’d done it before…”

It hit Louis like a slap in the face with a wet newspaper, more painful than he’d expected, leaving a dirty stain on him, the words printed right across his face, their meaning painfully clear. Right. Harry thought that just because he used to let people fuck him in public bogs when he was fifteen and stupid, not bothering with a condom or with any concept of demanding respect from his sexual partners, that he’d still be up for it now. Louis’ cheeks flared with heat. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his sexual history, per se - it was more a case of wishing he’d been a bit more sensible about it. But Louis was past the stage of bending over a dirty toilet seat and breathing in the fumes of strangers’ piss while someone fucked him, and he had no intention of fucking Harry over a toilet seat, either. 

With painful clarity, like he’d slammed his hand down on a shard of broken glass, Louis’ suddenly heard Harry’s words echoing in his head, the ugly things that he’d replayed over and over in his head since he’d said them like a broken record. He’d been trying to smother them all day, but now they were back with a vengeance, unbearably loud.  _ God forbid anything gets in the way of you shagging everything that moves...you couldn’t have kept it in your pants. _

He’d slapped a plaster over them, but the words had seeped through anyway, an ugly bloodstain ruining what had been a perfect evening. No, Louis realized, he couldn’t just sweep them under the rug and dance around the nasty things they’d said to each other; they had to acknowledge them, because they weren’t going to go away. Loath as he was to admit it, the most honest people were drunk or angry, and Harry had been angrier than Louis had ever seen him that night. He’d cut himself open and poured all of those ugly thoughts onto Louis like petrol and set him alight. Maybe he wouldn’t have said them if Louis hadn’t riled him up so much, but he must have been thinking them, letting them fester away inside him. That made Louis feel sick. Still, he had to acknowledge the sting of them before he could heal, like digging a splinter out with a needle or poking a bruise to see how much it hurt, so he took a deep breath and played them over in his head again, a lump gathering in his throat.

“I’m not like that any more,” he said sharply.

“I’m sorry,” said Harry, “I didn’t mean - ”

“Yeah,” Louis said. “You did.” He closed his eyes, imagined blood flowing from the wound, the sting of the words washing away. Admittedly, he couldn’t quite make himself let them go, but, he reminded himself, he’d said and thought a great deal of nasty things about Harry over the time they’d known each other, and it by no means lessened the love he had for him. “Let’s...let’s not talk about that for now. We need to decide what to do. People are going to be worried about you. I’m amazed your parents haven’t been blowing up your phone in a panic.”

“They probably have,” Harry said sheepishly; “I turned it off a few minutes after we got on the train.”

“ _ Harry _ ,” said Louis. “People are going to think I’ve kidnapped you.”

“No one’s going to think that,” Harry said, a little dubiously.

“Babe,” Louis said. “They’re your parents. They love you and they’ll be worried about you. Besides which, don’t you want to give them your side of the story rather than whatever slanderous bollocks Mike’s been able to come up with while we’re gone? Because I know I would.” He took Harry’s hand. “Look, I know it’s hard, but it’s got to be done. I’ll be with you all the way, you know that.”

Harry took a shaky breath, the air misting in front of him. “I just don’t want to let anybody down.”

“You aren’t letting anybody down,” said Louis. “I promise.”

He watched Harry curl in on himself like a tortoise retreating into his shell, shoulders hunched, hands drawing from Louis’ grip, everything drawing taut. Silently, Louis watched him, willing him to unfold again. Harry reminded him of one of those flowers that closed at the slightest touch, petals shyly curling inwards. It was a helpless feeling, seeing him shrink like that and knowing that touching him would only make it worse, that there was nothing he could do to pry him open, but he forced himself to stay quiet because his mum had always told him that the best way to get someone to open up was to be quiet. People didn’t like silences. Unfortunately, Harry had always been the exception to the rule.

Just as he was beginning to give up and worry was creeping up his back like sneaky fingers getting ready to grab at him, Harry exhaled and sat up, his chin tilting. He didn’t look Louis in the eye; his gaze carried on higher, drifting upwards until he was staring straight up at the moon, its light washing over his face and turning him silver, eyelashes casting light shadows onto his cheeks. For a moment he looked like a statue, like the moon had turned him to stone. Only his breath painting the air told Louis that he was real at all, smoke billowing from his barely open mouth. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

~*~

Silence descended upon them again as they wove through the lamplit streets, orange light spilling across their faces and casting strange shadows whenever they moved. It made Harry look angular, almost alien, and it didn’t help that he was avoiding Louis’ gaze. Louis wasn’t sure whether or not it was deliberate. He knew that Harry could be like this, misty and vague, when he was thinking very hard about things. That didn’t mean it didn’t make him edgy. He found himself glancing across at him frequently enough to make his neck ache, taking in the wrinkle in the centre of Harry’s forehead and the firm line of his mouth, lips pressed together. Louis didn’t know Holmes Chapel well, but he was sure that Harry was taking him the longest route possible to get back home, meandering through alleyways and down side roads and cutting across lawns while the cold pinched at Louis’ arms and unease prickled at his back.

It had occurred to him more than once that these were not ideal circumstances for meeting your partner’s parents for the first time. 

Just as he was beginning to worry about that properly - God, what if they got there and Anne took one look at Louis and called the police on him for kidnapping her son and hiding weed in his room? - they turned into a cosy cul-de-sac and Louis noticed a change in Harry’s bearing, his shoulders becoming even more rigid as his feet fell to familiar patterns. He had trodden these pathways many times over the years, that was obvious. They trekked across a stretch of grass with an indentation worn across it in an almost perfectly straight line, like a deer trail, where someone had been cutting across the lawn for long enough to wear the grass permanently thin. Most of the houses were plunged into darkness, only the light from the lamp posts sending light dancing across the window panes, but one house at the very end was still lit up, every window blazing with light as if the interior were ablaze. 

Harry stiffened so immediately that it was palpable even from the corner of Louis’ eye. Before he could react, Harry thrust his hand into Louis’ and marched up the front path. By this time Louis was the one who was suddenly filled with dread and wanted to turn round and go straight back to the park again. Letting Harry fuck him up the bum on a freezing cold roundabout was beginning to sound highly attractive - more so than being confronted by a terrified mother who was probably letting her imagination run wild and expecting the police to turn up on her doorstep and tell her that Louis had abducted and murdered her son. His throat dry, he opened his mouth to say that this was actually an awful idea and they should go home, but then Harry pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and Louis was too preoccupied with wondering where the hell he’d produced them from to object when Harry selected one and slid it into the lock.

Before he’d even had the chance to turn it, the door was wrenched open with such force that Louis half expected it to fly off its hinges and crash to the ground like they were in a superhero movie. Frozen with shock, he and Harry both stared into the light bursting from the hallway like they were looking down the corridor to heaven, and then a woman in a fluffy pink dressing gown burst out with a cry of “HARRY!”

The sheer force of the scream made Louis almost fall off the doorstep; he caught himself on the doorframe and almost fell off again when the woman barrelled forwards and gave Harry the biggest hug Louis had ever seen, enveloping him in her arms. Her hair was still damp and several flecks of water dropped onto Harry’s shirt, turning patches of it transparent. Burying her face in Harry’s neck, the woman seemed to be attempting to crush the life out of him; he was turning a very alarming colour. Eyes bulging, Harry turned frantically to Louis, who hastily let go of his hand and held both his hands up in surrender. He had no intention of getting in the way of this tornado of a woman, and he suspected that if he wanted to pry her arms away from Harry then he would have to use a crowbar.

All of a sudden the woman’s head snapped up and she shoved him backwards, hands clamped onto her shoulders to look him in the face. With all the ferocity of a t-rex, she demanded, “Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said in a very small voice. Hanging his head, he looked like a small boy waiting to be sent to his room.

“What were you thinking, running off like that? We’ve been going frantic, we almost had the police after you, it’s only thanks to Mike that they haven’t been combing the whole country looking for you - who’s  _ this _ ?”

Mid-sentence, she had spotted Louis, who froze. He felt like he was facing a team of snipers with one gun trained straight between his eyes, one at his heart and another aimed at his balls. Beside him, Harry had stiffened up at the mention of Mike’s name, and was apparently going to be no use whatsoever when it came to introductions. Warily, Louis licked his lips. He sensed that it would be unwise to attempt to charm this woman, which would have been his default option. She would smell it a mile off. Likewise, he didn’t dare play the hero for escorting Harry home because she probably knew that Louis was half the reason he’d run off in the first place. So instead, he opted for honesty and held out a slightly sweaty hand.

“I’m Louis,” he said. “I’m Harry’s boyfriend.”

The woman stared at him with her mouth hanging open, and all of a sudden everything clicked into place and he could see Harry in the light creases around her eyes from laughing and smiling, and strangely, in her mouth. His mother. Louis had suspected as much, but now he was ninety percent certain that this woman was too old to be a sister and yet stunningly beautiful and clearly not at all embarrassed to be stood in front of a stranger in her dressing gown with wet hair. 

For months he had thought pithy and unpleasant thoughts about this woman, imagining her as some kind of harpy with a phone glued to her head, always wearing a suit and a curly jurors wig even though logically he knew she was a lawyer and not a judge. Confronted with her as blatantly human, and normal, with chipped nail polish and slippers on, he suddenly felt an intense urge to hug her and make her a cup of tea.

Suddenly seeming to realize that he had offered her his hand, Harry’s mum rather dazedly took it and shook it up and down. After a moment, she seemed to return to herself and focused on him, giving the kind of appraising look he was used to getting during job interviews, a quick flick of the eyes taking him in from head to toe. Louis did his best to look like an upstanding citizen, the type of man you would want dating your son. Like he had done a public service by escorting Harry home rather than being instrumental to his original disappearance. He suspected that he failed miserably.

Just when Louis was starting to fidget, she glanced at Harry and said, “I was beginning to think you were never going to bring him home.”

If Louis was stunned by this, it was nothing to Harry’s reaction. His eyebrows shot up towards his hair. “But - I - but I never told you about him!”

“Oh, darling, really. You couldn’t have been more obvious if you  _ had _ told me.” Glancing across at Louis, she said, “He spent the first month of university calling me every day to tell me how insufferable you were and how much he hated you. It was adorable. He was smitten, even then.” Then, she raised an eyebrow and said pointedly to Harry, “Then he suddenly stopped mentioning you and changed the subject whenever I asked, and I realized something else must be going on. From the look on your face I assume rather a lot of things have been going on without you telling me, and you know how I hate keeping secrets from each other - so are you going to tell me?”

Harry looked like he might faint, his whole face leeched of colour. The front door was still open and Louis put a hand out to touch him, concerned that he might topple backwards and straight outside again. Or that he might run away. Astonishingly, his mum didn’t look upset, in spite of her words. It made Louis think of his own mum, with a stab of guilt; he’d almost forgotten her what with everything that had been going on. 

Biting his lip, Louis pulled his hand away. It was time for Harry to stand up on his own. 

“Mum,” Harry said, “I don’t think I want to be a lawyer any more.”

There was a deathly silence. Louis suddenly wanted to be outside on the street, or preferably in another country. Looking like he might vomit, Harry stood his ground, fists clenched. His mother stared at him, perplexed. Her expression reminded Louis of a scientist peering at a specimen through a microscope.

“Oh, darling,” she said, “is that all?”

“I’m really sorry,” Harry said frantically, “it’s just, it’s so stressful and there’s so much work to do, I don’t understand any of it, and what if I get asked to represent a rapist or a murderer and defend them when I know they did it, and I just want to have friends and get pissed and - what?”

She was smiling. “I was wondering when you were going to realize this profession wasn’t for you. Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart, I never meant to discourage you, I wanted you to make up your own mind, and I maybe still held out a little hope that you might surprise us all and become the fourth lawyer in the family. But honestly, Harry, you’re no lawyer. You’re not devious enough, you have the world’s worst poker face and you’re a terrible liar. Robin and I wanted to give you a chance, but your heart’s never really been in it, has it?”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said. “I thought you wanted me to be a lawyer. Like, badly. Badly enough to send Mike to check up on me and to constantly ask me how I was doing in all my tests and - ”

“And do my best to encourage you in case I’d got everything wrong?”

The expression on Harry’s face was as though he’d been slapped and wasn’t sure quite how it had happened. Confusion crept across his face in slow motion.

“We didn’t want you to feel like we weren’t supporting you, and if we’d just let you throw away your place at university without trying it first, you’d never have forgiven yourself for it, Harry. You’ve always been a trier.”

“You let me waste all that tuition money on a course you knew I didn’t really want to do?”

“But you did want to. In your own way. Didn’t you want to turn things around? To prove you could do it?”

“But I couldn’t do it,” Harry said miserably. “I failed. My grades were through the floor. All it did was made me miserable. Why did you threaten to bring me home if you thought that was what I wanted?”

“To see if you’d fight to stay,” she said gently. 

Harry, clearly gobsmacked, put a hand to his head. The bewildered look on his face was one Louis could empathise with; he too felt like he’d been hit by a car, trodden on an elephant and then bashed over the head with a frying pan. All of a sudden, Louis realized that they’d stumbled into a rom-com trope of epic proportions: it was all just a misunderstanding. 

“But Mike,” Harry said. “He threatened Louis! He was always checking up on me.”

“Mike wanted this future for you more badly than anyone else,” she said. “He always wanted to be more than he managed. He wanted to do something in politics, but it fell through, and he became a teacher. He’s never been happy with that. He didn’t want the same thing happening to you.”

“He terrorised us, Mum! He followed me around for weeks, dropping in on me at random, coming into my room - ”

“He tried to get me kicked out of uni,” Louis said. “He told my professor that I’d cheated on an essay and stolen someone else’s work, and I almost got thrown off my course.”

“ _ Mike Wilmslow _ ?” she said. “Are we talking about the same man?”

“It’s true,” Harry said. “He’s been making me miserable for months.”

Putting a hand to her forehead, Harry’s mother pressed lightly between her eyebrows, like she was trying to smooth out the lines there. There weren’t many of them. All of a sudden she looked extremely tired, and extremely like a Mum. A lump formed in Louis’ throat. Suddenly, he felt a deep ache of longing for his own family.

“We’ll need to talk about this properly,” she said. “If that’s true, Mike needs reporting to the university. He could have destroyed a young man’s life for his own petty, misguided reasons. I’ll look into it, and I promise you I’ll do everything I can to see this situation put to rights.”

The look of relief on Harry’s face made Louis almost want to laugh out loud. And he’d thought  _ he  _ was a mummy’s boy. Harry looked to be about ten seconds away from locking his arms around her like a monkey and refusing to let go. His blissful expression was almost ridiculous.

“But first,” she said, “I need a cup of tea.”

~*~

Harry’s mum - “call me Anne,” she’d told him, whilst opening a bottle of wine - was officially one of Louis’ new favourite people in existence. Since their emotional meeting on the front door step, she’d made them all tea, decided they needed something stronger, and poured them all drinks in the largest wine glasses Louis had ever seen. She was currently on her second glass, which would probably have been her third or fourth if they were drinking from glasses of a normal size. She’d also attempted to lighten the mood by getting out four photo albums full of baby photos of Harry. Louis’ favourite was of him posing with his hands on his hips, wearing an enormous bra. Seeing Harry as a child was weird; Louis couldn’t quite fit in this grinning blonde child with the Harry he could see right in front of him, slumped across the sofa and dribbling on the upholstery. Half a glass of wine had wiped him right out. Still, it had been an exhausting day. 

His head was in Anne’s lap, hair straggling across her thighs, and she was stroking him like a cat with an expression of pure contentment written across her features, nothing like the frantic look she’d worn when she opened the door to them. It made Louis feel jealous from both sides; jealous because looking at them made him miss his own mum, and also because he found it strange watching someone else touch Harry that way, someone who’d known him for every single second of his life. It made him feel very inconsequential. He’d known Harry for mere months. This woman had known Harry forever.

“He really likes you, you know.”

She spoke so softly that Louis wasn’t startled, even when her voice emerged from the quiet of the room. He’d been lost in his own thoughts, lulled into a kind of trance by the warmth of the electric fire and the wine they’d all been drinking. His glass was clasped loosely in one hand.

Louis looked up at her, and then down at Harry. His mouth was hanging slightly open; he was drooling a little, the corner of his mouth glistening.

“He kept you secret,” Anne said, “but poorly. Bless him, he’s never been very subtle. Always on his phone, rushing off to take all his texts and calls in private. For the first few months of uni, he talked about you all the time. When it all stopped, I wondered if you’d really done something to upset him, but he’d have told me about that…”

“He was afraid you’d keep him away from me,” Louis said. “To get him to focus more on his studies.”

Anne snorted. “He always was very dramatic that way. Perhaps he should be the one doing a drama degree.” Smiling fondly, she pushed Harry’s hair off his face. “I can tell that he cares about you a lot. He’s like an open book, especially to me. Harry’s got a lot of love to give, he trusts a lot of people. But I get the feeling that there’s something different about you.”

Louis’ mouth was suddenly very dry, in spite of the wine. “I love him,” he said.

“Of course you do,” she said. “He’s Harry. How could you not?”

Harry had started to breathe heavily, not quite snoring, but only a few shades from it. His clothes were crumpled from where he’d been on the play equipment, his hands slightly dirty. Louis could see up his nose. He stirred slightly, and Louis smiled. How could he not, indeed?

“The question is,” she said, “do you love him enough to stick with him? Harry’s a loving person, he gives himself up easily, but he’s highly strung, he gets very focused on things - small, silly things. He worries. He’s an overachiever in his own right, but he doesn’t always get the results he aims for. Things won’t always be easy with him. There are going to be days when he panics and stresses and won’t talk to you. Times when he pushes himself too hard and you might need to pull him back. Harry can be very intense. You don’t have to give him forever - you’re young, both of you. Things might change. But if you’re going to promise him eternity, at least for now, you’re going to have to mean it. Do you understand?”

Louis met her gaze unflinchingly, without any of the discomfort he’d ever expected to feel when faced with Harry’s mother. “I know you don’t know me,” he said. “You don’t know what I’m like or what I might do. Believe me, I’ve done some things over the past year that I’ve regretted a lot. But being with Harry isn’t one of them.” He looked down at Harry’s sleeping face. “We hurt each other. I wasn’t honest with him, and it made us both miserable...I wasn’t a good boyfriend. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life making up for that, if he’ll still have me. I want to make him happy.”

“He doesn’t need you to be perfect,” Anne said gently. “All he needs is for you to be there. The rest will come in time. Are you willing to work through the problems you’ve had? And to support him? He’s just given up on something he’s been expecting to do for his whole life. Chances are he might be confused. He’s going to need someone to rely on. Are you willing to be that someone?”

“All I want is to make him happy,” Louis said quietly.

Anne looked at him again, and he felt like she was meeting him for the first time all over again, giving him a whole new appraisal in light of this answer.

“That’s all I ask,” she said, and she raised her glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the last one!


	21. Chapter 21

Louis walked out of his exam with a warm feeling in his belly and an even warmer feeling in his aching right hand. He flexed his fingers, stiff from clutching a pen for several hours; there were ink smudges on the side of his hand, and he was more exhausted than anyone who had been sat down for two hours had any right to be - but he was deeply satisfied. He was sure, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that he had passed that exam with flying colours.

Stopping at Starbucks for an extortionately priced coffee and some double chocolate cookies - his student budget would only stretch to the smallest sized cup, but it was the principle of the thing - he headed into town, bag slung across his shoulder, appreciating the walk. Things that would usually have annoyed him - scrotty teenagers shoving each other into the road, slow walkers, littering - seemed inconsequential. In fact, Louis couldn’t quite keep from smiling as he walked, certain that he must look quite demented but nevertheless not at all inclined to stop. It was a sunny day, warmth spilling across his shoulders and turning the hairs on his arms gold.

He ducked into a small shop on one of the street corners, a shop he’d become familiar with over the past few months. The tang of bleach and nail varnish remover hit him, as it always did, making him cringe slightly, but it didn’t take him long to acclimatise. He was used to it by then, it was just the first pinch to his nostrils that threw him off.

Harry looked up as he entered and a huge smile spilled across his face. Straightening up, he lifted the brush he’d been sweeping the floor with, stood by an enormous pool of hair, mostly dark but with a few streaks of blonde and ginger in there. He’d swept it all into a neat pile, but somehow he always came home with strangers’ stray hairs clinging to him, like he’d been cuddling with hundreds of dogs. Harry’s hair was growing longer now, the tips of it touching the wings of his bird tattoos, hidden underneath the tunic he wore for work. He had acrylic nails on, slightly wobbly looking, since he hadn’t yet mastered the technique and Louis was rubbish to practice on; he always managed to rip them off before they’d dried.

“For you,” Louis said, offering him the coffee cup and the rolled up bag of cookies. He’d intended to eat them all himself, but with Harry looking quite so radiant, how could he deny him?

Harry lit up even more at the offer. “Babe!” he said, handing Louis the brush and taking the coffee and cookies from him, “you shouldn’t have.” He crunched one of the cookies in three swift bites, and downed half Louis’ coffee in a single gulp that made Louis’ own throat twinge in sympathy. Handing back the sorely depleted cup, he took the brush back and said, “I’m almost done here, can you wait five minutes?”

“For you, I might even wait six,” Louis said, and he went and jumped up onto the reception desk, swinging his legs.

Carly, the receptionist, tutted and swatted at him, but she was well used to his antics by now and he caught her fighting a smile as he deliberately wiggled his arse backwards to cover her appointment book. Without speaking, Louis handed her the Starbucks cup - in for a penny, in for a pound; he was more of a tea drinker anyway - and she accepted it and took a slurp, the straw rattling obnoxiously against the bottom of the cup. Smiling, Louis turned back to watch Harry.

It had only been a few months since Harry had picked up the job at the salon, originally just a stopgap to fill the hours while he tried to figure out what he actually wanted to do with his life. But he’d enjoyed it more than he’d anticipated - originally he was only supposed to be sweeping up hair, washing it, and making cups of tea, but his enthusiasm and charisma had led to a kind of impromptu apprenticeship, except with a decent wage. Now he was learning to properly do nails and facials and other beauty treatments, with a bit of hair, although he preferred the beauty side of it, he told Louis. The days were often long and busy, he came back smelling of bleach and nail polish and that slight burning smell of hair dryers and straighteners, but the change in him was so drastic that sometimes Louis looked at him and didn’t recognise him. He was Harry from the hill, the drunk Harry lying on some stranger’s bedroom floor, the Harry spinning on the roundabout in the playground, all the time. Laughter lines appeared around his eyes so frequently, and so deeply, that they appeared carved there. Louis loved to look at them, to kiss the starburst crinkles.

He loved to see Harry come home every night to show off some new technique he’d learned on his nails, to have Harry practice on him and fuss over the state of his cuticles and scold him for chewing his nails. And he never turned down a massage, which Harry was also learning to do; he was a little jealous to think of Harry’s big hands roaming strangers’ bodies, but the massages Harry gave Louis tended to have...benefits. “Happy endings”, Harry said solemnly, which always made Louis roll his eyes and tell him not to be so sleazy.  

Most markedly of all was the lack of stress Harry showed. It wasn’t perfect, of course; he had bad days, rude customers, days when things went too fast and he messed up and came home flustered and furious, and the panic attacks hadn’t quite stopped - but that would come with time. His lips no longer bore signs of chewing or raw strips where he’d torn bits of skin off them, his skin had cleared up from the stress breakouts, and he no longer spent hours hunched over his desk. In fact, Louis thought, now he was on his feet rather than crouched over textbooks, he seemed to have grown a few inches. Bastard.

Harry tucked the broom away in the corner and crossed the room to kiss Louis on the cheek. “All done.”

“How was your day, darling?” Louis asked.

“Oh, splendid,” Harry said solemnly. Then, “how did your exam go?”

“Aced it, of course,” said Louis.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” Harry said. “I’m so proud of you.”

He dipped in and kissed him, and Louis surged into the kiss, a little excited; he’d been the one studying so much that his back and arse cheeks ached, and it felt like forever since he’d been relaxed enough to have a proper snog.

A cough from behind him made him laugh into Harry’s mouth; aggrieved, Carly was tapping the reception desk with her fake nails. Clearly just as amused as Louis, Harry gave a very exaggerated moan and grabbed what he could of Louis’ arse, squeezing it, whilst Carly tutted.

They parted with a wet pop, and Harry turned to grin over Louis’ shoulder. “Problem?”

“Get out, you soppy twats,” she said, waving them away. “You make me sick with your canoodling.”

“You love our canoodling,” Louis said, hopping off the desk and taking Harry’s hand. “Come on, Harold, we’ll take our canoodling elsewhere.”

“Nine o’clock tomorrow, we’ve got Mrs. Bishop in for a perm and she won’t have anyone wash her hair but you,” Carly said, looking sternly at Harry from over the top of her appointment book. “Don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Harry, taking off his apron and tossing it at her; she snagged it neatly out of the air and folded it, giving him a dirty look that didn’t quite hide the fondness lingering behind it. Everyone at the salon was in love with him already, of course. That only made Louis prouder, to know that it was just tough shit. Harry was his.

They walked down the street together, heading for the pub that had recently become their local, a place far warmer and friendlier than the dirty old man pub round the corner from uni. It meant a longer drunken walk back to the flat at night, but the lack of flat caps and stickiness more than made up for the inconvenience. As they walked, Louis recounted every single exam question and what he’d put for each answer, the questions that he didn’t have a clue about and the ones he knew word for word, and Harry told him about the old ladies at the salon and doing a customer’s gel nails for the first time and getting an extra doughnut for free when he went on the bakery run.

Everyone else was already in the pub when they got there, celebrating the end of term. Perrie shoved something pink and fizzy into Louis’ hand, a cocktail umbrella balancing on the rim and maraschino cherries bobbing up and down, and Liam handed Harry a pint, foggy with condensation. Shrugging, they chinked glasses and took a sip, and then sat down, squeezing alongside Liam, who had his arm tucked around a new girlfriend. The answer, Louis suspected, to whom he’d been texting obsessively for so many weeks.

They all crowded around the table, Niall’s raucous laugh bouncing off the walls, the buzz of conversation so loud that Louis and Harry could barely hear each other speak without pressing their mouths directly to each other’s ears. Louis, of course, relished the opportunity to say inappropriate things when Harry least expected it, resulting in a large quantity of beer being inhaled and spurting out of his nose in a spray of amber. Louis was just thumping him on the back after such an incident, whilst beer dripped from Harry’s flared nostrils, when he glanced across at the bar and saw Sarah standing there with a group of her friends.

Distracted, Louis stared at her. Since he’d last seen her, she’d had her hair chopped into a bob and gained some weight; both of these things suited her. But the strangest thing about her was something he couldn’t pinpoint, and he stared at her, perplexed, trying to figure it out. Whatever it was had made her almost unrecognisable, so that for a moment he thought he was mistaken and he was looking at someone else entirely.

Then, he realized. She looked happy.

The past few times he’d seen her, she’d been angry or worried or confused, all of these emotions eroding a cleft into her forehead, making her tight with tension, screwed up small like a paper doll. Now, she stood tall, a drink in her hand, laughing at someone’s joke, like the first time he’d seen her. Not for the first time, Louis felt bad for bringing her and Niall together, for giving them cause to destroy each other even after Niall had told him no. But he felt better in the knowledge that she seemed okay again now - and maybe, he thought, she’d learnt something. Maybe one day she’d look back on her disastrous relationship with Niall and realize that it had changed her for the better. Louis certainly felt that way. For one thing, he’d learnt that he was the worst matchmaker in the universe. He’d also learnt - from his own relationship as well as from theirs - that lying was a terrible foundation for a relationship.

Sarah looked up, then, and they made eye contact. Louis froze.

For a moment they looked cautiously at each other - then, Sarah nodded. Louis nodded back, and she turned away.

Turning back to his own friends, Louis realized that Niall had caught him looking and knew exactly who he was staring at. Slightly uncomfortable, Louis picked up his drink, took a sip for courage, cringed - it was two parts watery coke, four parts vodka - and said, “What happened with her, in the end? I just realized I never asked.”

“I don’t know, I just told her the truth, I suppose. She didn’t like it. She asked a lot of questions, I didn’t do a great job of explaining myself so I just googled it and read a load of blog posts and stuff to her to try and help her get it. It was…” He blew out a breath. “Hard. But I suppose it did make me feel better, because I really did feel bad about lying to her. She’s still pissed at me, I don’t think we’re ever going to be friends or probably ever speak to each other again. But I owed her an explanation and she got it. That’s enough for me. Now I’m just gonna bury the hatchet and move on.”

“No second date with that girl you met on the forum?”

Niall shook his head. “Nah. She was nice. Cute, but...she recommended I take some time to sort my head out, and I think she was right. Besides, I stood her up halfway through our first date to go and come out to my ex and save my best friend’s relationship, she probably thought I was mental.”

“Well,” said Louis.

Niall slapped his arm.

“Wait,” said Harry. “Am I missing something? You’re gay?”

Everyone around the table fell silent. Louis knew that Niall had taken his advice and told them all about his sexuality, which had garnered mostly positive responses, even if they had all been incredulous and had asked numerous insensitive questions before Niall had told them to shut the fuck up. But apart from Sarah, Harry would be the first person outside of their inner circle that Niall came out to, and Louis knew that if he didn’t handle it right, it would probably affect how Niall treated his sexuality in the future. It was easy enough to say that he would be open with people from then on out, but Louis knew from experience that coming out was nowhere near as easy as it seemed - especially because it never stopped, because every new person had to be told he wasn’t straight. Harry, he thought, would understand that. He was gay, after all. But not one of their friends had batted an eyelid when Louis told them he was gay - they probably weren’t surprised - and yet Niall coming out had resulted in an hour-long interrogation punctuated with offensive questions like “is that even a thing?” or “are you just like, a really, really late developer?” Resisting the urge to kick Harry under the table or start tapping out ABORT MISSION in morse code on his glass, Louis held his breath.

“Er,” said Niall. “I’m asexual, actually. It’s like - ”

“Isn’t that where you don’t experience sexual attraction?” said Harry.

Jaws hit the floor all around the table. Every one of them stared at Harry like he’d just grown a bright purple beard and started singing the opera. Louis didn’t think a single one of them had known the meaning of the word before Niall had come out to them, aside from in the context of asexual reproduction, which they’d touched upon in biology way back in high school. And high school biology was a distant memory for all of them. To hear Harry calmly cite the definition like he heard it every day had left them all flabbergasted.

“Yeah,” Niall said, bewildered. “Exactly.”

“I knew a girl at college who was asexual,” Harry said. “She was cool. She was really good at origami.” Then, he noticed that they were all gaping at him. “What?”

Louis laughed breathlessly and dragged him down to kiss him on the temple, a quick brush of his lips to the smooth skin there.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I love you too,” Harry whispered. “Did I miss something?”

“No,” Louis said fondly. “You didn’t miss anything at all.”

~*~

They didn’t stay out late that night, just long enough to get pleasantly buzzed before Harry and Louis decided to call it a night, leaving the others as they made their way back home. For now, Harry was still living in their student flat even though he’d dropped out, his rent until the end of the year already paid. He couldn’t get his deposit back; it made no sense to leave early and waste the money when they could all have a few more weeks living together.

The first year was drawing to a close, though; people were already packing up, ready to move their stuff out at the end of the week - Louis excepted, of course; he’d wait until the morning he went home before he started clearing out. It felt strange to be leaving the ugly little flat that had been their home for so many months, that cramped bedroom and dingy kitchen more like home to Louis than his childhood home that smelt of playdough and perfume. Even stranger to be leaving behind the wardrobes that had defined their relationship for so long, throwing open the doors to let the sunshine in. No more hiding.

Living arrangements for the next year had already been sorted. Louis and Harry were renting a student house with Niall, who had put up a fight about moving out of the flat at first, but eventually acquiesced because he claimed it would be weird not having Louis burst in on him multiple times a day, and Perrie, who insisted on moving in with them because she didn’t trust Niall and Louis to live together in one small house and not burn it down. Jesy, Jade and Leigh-Anne had another house; Liam had elected to stay in halls for another year, because he ‘liked the atmosphere.’ Louis suspected that he also liked the idea of being the adopted big brother to all the new freshers. Weird as it felt to leave him behind, Louis wasn’t worried. It wasn’t as if they weren’t still all on the same campus.

It was strange, walking upstairs hand in hand to see all the many rows of boxes in the corridor, people already packing up their stuff - like on the day Louis had caught Harry preparing to leave, but on a far wider scale, and without the feeling like he’d swallowed a bag of rocks. When they reached the bedroom door, Harry pulled out his keys and Louis hesitated, putting a hand on the small of his back.

“One last time?” he said. “For old time’s sake?”

For a moment, Harry just looked blankly at him - then, he realized.

“Don’t be too long,” he said.

Kissing him quickly, Louis broke away and jogged down the hallway to his own room, opening the door and kicking it shut behind him. Excitement buzzing through him, he opened the wardrobe door and clambered inside for the last time. Clothes brushed against his face, coat-hangers clinking. For a moment Louis paused to drink in the sensation of being plunged into a dark wardrobe, one he’d never expected to become so familiar with - and then he was moving, ducking under rails of clothes, moving through the passageways he knew so well. It was easier than he’d become accustomed to; most people had taken out their clothes, already packed them away. It was disorientating to have those familiar markers removed. Louis got his bearings in the wardrobe that smelt faintly of piss, but got confused again when he didn’t encounter the shoe collection that always tripped him up, or the plushies he usually kicked across the floor. So disorientating, in fact, that he got a shock when he stumbled into Harry’s room, in more ways than one.

Harry had shucked his clothes and left them in a neat pile on the floor. He was laid on the bed, stark naked, slowly stroking his cock with one hand while the other roamed up and down his bare stomach, fingers trailing up and down in a rhythmic motion.

“Oh,” Louis said hoarsely. “I don’t remember this part.”

“I decided to shake things up a bit,” said Harry.

“I can see that.”

He was already starting to get hard, the shock of walking in to find Harry naked and ready for him making his heart hammer. Pulling his shirt over his head and kicking his shoes off without unfastening them, Louis crawled onto the bed with his jeans still on and started kissing Harry’s stomach, Harry’s fist still curled loosely around his cock while the head bumped against Louis’ bare chest where he was leaning over him. The slick sounds of Harry touching himself made Louis ache; moving up to swirl his tongue decadently around Harry’s nipple, enjoying the hitch in his breath that came as a response. His hand slid up to toy with the other nipple, flicking it lightly and watching it harden even as he felt the other stiffening beneath the attentions of his tongue. Louis’ eyes flicked up to see Harry’s response; he was watching, mouth hanging open, eyes glazed. The movement of his hand had slowed on his dick, distracted. His tongue slipped out to wet his lips.

“I don’t remember asking you to stop,” Louis said softly.

Harry’s hand sped up in response. His breathing was becoming slightly laboured. Hovering over him, Louis could feel his knuckles rubbing up and down through his jeans as Harry stroked himself, the friction dizzyingly good. Fighting the urge to roll his hips downwards into it, Louis sucked Harry’s other nipple into his mouth and rubbed the wet one with his thumb.

With his free hand, Harry started scrabbling frantically at the zip of Louis’ jeans, and he’d tugged it down about halfway when Louis caught at his wrist, pinned it down on the bed, and rolled properly on top of him to look him right in the eyes. Harry swallowed convulsively.

Still holding down his arm, Louis started kissing Harry’s neck. For a moment, Harry struggled, flexing his fingers, then he stopped touching himself and his other hand found its way to the front of Louis’ jeans. Growling, Louis seized the wrist of that hand, too, and held him down properly, grinding his hips down. Harry stopped struggling immediately, a low whine coming from between his teeth. He was panting.

“Please,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“I wanna touch you, Louis, please let me - ”

“Shh,” said Louis. “Can I trust you to keep still or do I need to make you?”

For a moment Harry rocked helplessly into him, greedy and desperate, the muscles of his arms fluttering - but then he grabbed two fistfuls of the sheets with his hands still above his head and Louis took that as a promise to be good. Pleased, he slid down and wrapped his lips around the head of Harry’s dick.

He swirled his tongue around the head, dipping into his slit just for a moment before drawing back down, slipping a bit more of Harry’s cock into his mouth. Beneath him, Harry was moaning obscenely, rutting up into his touch, his hands fisted in the sheets like his life depended on it. Louis was painfully hard now, his cock tenting his jeans and starting to ache, but he liked that - knowing that Harry was as desperate to touch him as he was to be touched, and that he wouldn’t allow it. Every urge was screaming at him to touch himself, even just a little, but he ignored it, relishing in the hot throbbing as his dick pressed against the material.

Louis went a little deeper, and then slid right down almost to the base of Harry’s cock, as far as he could go. The sound Harry made in response, almost a sob, was so hot he almost lost his focus. Pulling off, Louis kissed him from base to tip and then started focusing on the head again, his tongue sliding over Harry’s slit. Then, he paused to slip a finger into his mouth, sucking it as enthusiastically as if he still had Harry’s dick against his tongue. Watching him, Harry gasped like he could feel it, hips jerking.

Once his finger was wet enough, Louis slowly moved down to press just the tip of it against Harry’s hole, which fluttered like it was trying to draw him in. Refusing to be rushed, Louis lightly traced his finger up and down, stroking him there. He wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, he knew, so he reached for the lube on the bedside table and drizzled a generous amount between Harry’s cheeks, sliding his finger through the wetness to spread it around.

By now, Harry was begging so desperately it barely made sense any more, just a rush of “fuck” and “please” and “oh my God, Louis.” Taking pity on him - and on himself - Louis took one of his hands, still obediently resting above his head, and moved it down to the half-undone fly of his jeans.

Harry needed no more encouragement than that; popping the button and wrenching the fly down so fast it almost broke, he grabbed the waistband of Louis’ jeans and yanked them down past his arse, the material pooling around his thighs. Too desperate to take them off all the way, Harry fumbled for the waistband of his boxers and that was when Louis grabbed his wrist again.

“We’ve got all night,” he reminded him.

“I want to _touch,_ ” said Harry.

After a moment’s consideration, Louis moved his hand to rest over the shape of Louis’ cock through his underwear, and Harry immediately pressed down with his palm, rubbing hard. It felt so good that Louis lost his concentration and forgot about teasing him, just ground his hips hard to increase the friction, his head dropping as he rubbed against Harry’s hand. The feeling was indescribable, he was almost embarrassed by how needy he felt, how badly he wanted to come and probably could, just from this, grinding against the flat of Harry’s palm.

“Slower,” he forced out, although it was the last thing he wanted to say.

Harry whined, but obediently slowed his pace so that he was doing little more than cupping Louis through the fabric, the press of his fingers intoxicating. Breathing out, Louis took the opportunity to slip his finger inside Harry, as deep as it would go.

“Oh, fuck,” Harry said, his head falling back to bang against the pillow.

Louis slowly started pushing his finger in and out, very carefully, amazed as he always was by how tight Harry was around him. As he did, Harry pushed back against his finger, clearly impatient with how slowly he was going. Holding back a smile, Louis slowed down even further.

“Louis, come on!”

“Patience is a virtue,” Louis said, curling his finger experimentally. “Did nobody ever tell you that?”

“You’re such a dick,” Harry gasped.

“That’s not a very nice way to speak to the man with his finger in your arse,” Louis said. “I could always take it out, if you’d prefer.”

Harry surprised him, then, by grabbing Louis’ arse in both hands, one huge palm on each cheek, and pulling him forwards. Heat radiated through his boxers. Harry’s fingers tightened deliberately, pawing at Louis through his underwear so fiercely that it made him shiver. He could feel where Harry’s thumbs were meeting, parting his cheeks through the fabric. Louis swallowed. It had been a while since he’d been fucked, but not so long that he couldn’t remember how much he’d enjoyed it. How Harry had pushed into him from behind, sharp hip bones pressing against Louis’ arse as he bottomed out. Hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” said Harry.

If things carried on at this rate, Harry would not be the one getting fucked tonight, and Louis really was in the mood to top him - especially since he was clearly desperate for it. Shifting his hips to try and change Harry’s grip, he said softly, “If I’m going to fuck you, my dick’s going to need to be wetter than this, don’t you think?”

Harry’s whole face lit up like someone had flipped a light switch between his ears. Within seconds he was upright, Louis’ finger sliding out of his arse and lube dripping onto the sheets: Harry yanked his boxers down and Louis kicked them off, along with the jeans.

For a moment, Harry took Louis’ cock in his hand and looked at it admiringly, his gaze sweeping from root to tip with such clear arousal that it made Louis harder just watching him look. Then, Harry picked up the lube with his free hand, squeezed some onto Louis’ cock and started to move his hand up and down, slickly massaging the lube all over. The hot, wet drag of it made Louis moan in spite of himself, head tipping back. Harry’s thumb rubbed over the sensitive spot beneath the head; seconds later he caught the precum beading at Louis’ slit and swiped it across the head, mouth hanging open in fascination. Then, Harry’s head dropped and he tongued easily at the head, hitting all the right spots, making Louis hot all over. He got the sense that Harry was holding back, one fist in the sheets with the other still on Louis’ cock, moving slowly up and down. Louis would never admit that he loved being wound up like this, made to ache and moan and relish in that desperate lower-belly tightness of arousal, the throb of his body begging for more. Luckily, Harry had never needed him to. Either he loved to tease, or he just knew that Louis liked it when he did - regardless, he was exceptionally good at it. But Louis also knew that Harry was not always patient when it came to what he wanted, and his point was proven when Harry suddenly sank down right to the base of Louis’ cock all on one go, the head nudging the back of his throat. Swearing, Louis grabbed at his hair and fought the urge to arch up into his mouth.

There was a glimmer of amusement in Harry’s eyes, made all the more obscene by the way his mouth was stretched around Louis’ length, lips perfectly pink. A trickle of lube ran down his chin; Louis put out a hand to catch it as if in a dream, and put the wet finger to his tongue. It had a synthetic, plasticky taste, not quite disguised by the taste of strawberries. Not a bad lube flavour, all things considered.

Apparently realizing that Louis was distracted, Harry tapped him on the hip before swallowing very deliberately around Louis’ cock, gagging ever so slightly as he did. Then, he pulled off to suck at the head, the rest of his cock exposed to cool air that made him shiver. Harry looked up at him, his head tilted to one side. Questioning.

“Good boy,” Louis said hoarsely.

Immediately, Harry dived back down, kissing him all over. He went back to sucking with impressive fervour. Louis had never before met someone who actively enjoyed sucking cock as much as Harry did; he himself quite liked it, but the appeal was mostly in knowing that he was making his partner feel good, listening to them moan, feeling them struggle to hold still under his ministrations. Knowing he looked good with a dick in his mouth. Harry took pleasure in all of those things and more; the things Louis struggled with, like the ache of his jaw and fighting his gag reflex and the tiredness of the arm he used to wank the person off while he blew them - Harry loved those things. Got off on them.

“Hey,” Louis said, tapping his shoulder. “You down there.”

His mouth popping wetly as Louis’ dick slipped out, Harry gazed questioningly up at him.

“Not that this isn’t fun,” said Louis, “but I do seem to recall you wanted me to fuck you.”

“Mm,” Harry agreed, kissing the head of Louis’ cock.

“Well, don’t all move at once,” Louis said breathlessly, but even as he said it he was entwining his fingers into Harry’s hair to pull him closer, curls carding loosely through his fingers. He gave in to the helpless thrusts of his hips, pushing forwards into the tight heat of Harry’s mouth, and Harry grabbed his arse and held on just as tightly, letting go of his cock completely to let Louis guide him.

For several minutes Louis lost himself in the sensation, fucking into Harry’s mouth in a haze of pleasure, struggling not to embarrass himself by moaning too much every time Harry pulled off for a momentary reprieve before diving back in. He looked utterly fucked, pupils blown like dinner plates, lips glossy pink and gleaming. Once, Louis reached down to rub his thumb across the swollen flesh and Harry sucked Louis’ thumb into his mouth, like he didn’t want to leave his mouth empty even for a second. That image in itself was so hot that Louis had to force himself to pull out to keep from coming right then and there, panting as he held Harry’s shoulders to keep him off. Harry made a sulky noise, and lowered his hand to start touching himself again, hesitantly, like he half expected Louis to tell him to stop.

“Bed,” Louis ordered.

Pleased, Harry crawled onto the bed and lay flat out, one hand toying with his nipple and the other stroking himself, a little faster now. Louis knocked both hands away as he climbed onto the bed to hover over him, fettering Harry’s wrists in both hands. His fingers only just met around Harry’s wrists, which was a little embarrassing; he chose to ignore it.

Lying underneath him, breathless and squirming, Harry waited. Louis pushed a finger into him again, making sure he was still loose; upon finding that he was, he added another one. Curling them, he felt around for that one magic spot that would make Harry cry out, rubbing up against the inside of him, gently enough to frustrate him.

“Come on, Louis, please - oh, _fuck_!”

Bingo.

Harry arched desperately up into his touch as Louis rubbed against his prostate, torn between pulling away from the unbearable intensity of it and pushing harder into his fingers to take even more from him. Pleased with his reaction, Louis twisted his fingers again, opening him up, adding a third. Then, before Harry could recover, he slipped his fingers out and lined up with his hole, the head of his cock nudging at Harry’s entrance.

Eager as he was, Harry almost seemed to pull him in, but he was still shockingly tight as Louis pushed in, wanting to take it slow but too desperate to draw things out much longer. With a gasp, he thrusted, hard, until he was completely inside and it felt so good that he could barely focus, lost in the pleasure of it.

Harry surprised him by reaching out to hold his hand.

Things did not last for long after that. It was all just a blur of sensation, Louis thrusting into him, the headboard banging against the wall, Harry’s fingernails biting into the back of his hand while the other hand tugged him closer. When Louis came, it was sooner than he’d intended, his lips on Harry’s neck. Rolling off onto the bed, he crawled between Harry’s legs to suck his cock to finish him off; when Harry came several minutes later, it was with a noise so loud that Louis expected the whole building heard it.

They lay together in sleepy ecstasy for several minutes, until Harry managed to limp into the bathroom and fetch a cloth for them to wipe themselves down with. Sticky and breathless, Louis pulled Harry into him to kiss the top of his slightly sweaty head.

“I’m so glad I met you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry said softly. “Me, too.”

~*~

They all gathered at the station together, even though half of them could drive. Louis’ mum was waiting in the car park to take him home for the summer; Niall would be coming to spend a few weeks with him, before he went back to Ireland to see his parents. Harry made jokes about being jealous of Niall. Perrie told them they might as well get married if they were going to carry on like that. Louis told them all to fuck off and fought against the urge to get a bit weepy. He was going to miss them all. Even though he’d see them again, and text them and skype them and see them on campus next year, it would be weird not living with them and bursting in on them. Not getting his feet tangled in Jesy’s underwear when he lurked in her wardrobe. Not helping Jade do the washing up. Not nabbing Liam’s XBox or borrowing his DVDs or arguing about superheroes at three in the morning. Not yelling at Leigh-Anne to stop singing in the kitchen at the crack of dawn, or nipping with Perrie to the pub whenever he felt like it. Several weeks of separation from the people he’d come to consider his second family, even though he’d never live with most of them again.

“Group hug!” commanded Jesy, and they all rushed in like a group of kids doing the Hokey Kokey, piling in together in a mess of hair and perfume and too much Lynx. Jade’s parka had a fluffy hood, which went straight up Louis’ nose. Someone stood on his foot. He poked them in the ribs in retaliation.

When they all parted, Harry was still hanging on to Louis’ waist with one loose arm, grinning. Considering he’d only become their friend in the past few weeks, the others had indoctrinated him into their group surprisingly quickly. Seeing him included after months of estrangement made Louis warm inside.

“Right, well I’ll see all you tossers next year, then, bye,” said Leigh-Anne, making as if to dash off.

A laugh rippled through the group, but her jokey farewell set off a chain reaction and they began to disperse. Perrie kissed Louis on the cheek (“bye, babe,” she said, and then to Harry, sternly, “look after him or I’ll bite your balls off and fry them on the barbecue.” Louis didn’t think Harry looked nearly concerned enough about this threat) before departing with Jade, who lived near to where she did and had agreed to give her a lift.

Liam walked forwards, hovered for a moment, and gruffly tried to shake Louis’ hand. Delighted, Louis punched him in the arm.

“Don’t be so straight, you tosser,” he said.

“Sorry,” said Liam, and hugged him.

After a little prompting, he hugged Harry, too. Liam still found it a bit strange that Louis was going out with the guy they’d all slagged off for most of the year, and not confided in him; for some reason he seemed to blame this on Harry and they still had a few odd moments here and there, although Louis thought Harry was growing on him. Of course he was. Harry was like a flower, putting down roots and growing on everyone he came into contact with, until he was a part of them. Louis felt very fortunate to have Harry’s roots tangled up in his.

Leigh hugged them all, getting surprisingly emotional, especially as far as Harry was concerned; she’d garnered quite a soft spot for him lately, bonding over nail art and a mutual fondness for the Great British Bake-Off, which none of the rest of the flat could stand. Slightly teary-eyed, she rushed off to catch the train home.

Next, Jesy gave Louis a huge bear hug, lifting him off the ground, and kissed Harry repeatedly on the cheeks, which made him adorably flustered. She also took him aside to show him a photograph which made them both laugh at Louis. If he’d had to bet money on it, he’d have said it was probably a photo of him stood outside on the night of the fire alarm wearing Jesy’s dressing gown, but he couldn’t be sure. When she left, it was with a smirk on her face. Louis hated her slightly.

Then, it was just the three of them; Louis, Harry and Niall. A weird silence hung over them for a moment; Louis wasn’t quite sure how to say goodbye to Harry in a way that didn’t involve copious amounts of kissing, and Niall was watching them in the interested and slightly wary way one might watch a documentary about bees.

“Er,” said Louis.

“Oh, just kiss already,” Niall said good-naturedly. “I won’t look.” He made a huge show of covering his eyes with both hands, and peeping between his fingers at them. His grin was so huge that it showed past his hands.

“Fuck off,” said Louis, and moved in for a kiss.

It turned into several kisses. Several kisses, a sneaky hickey, and a lot of mushy whispering that Louis would never admit to. _I love you so much, call me okay, and text me, every day, yeah, yeah I promise, I will, I love you_ -

“Oh, my God, get a room,” said Niall.

“Fuck off,” Louis said again, this time into Harry’s mouth.

Niall responded by making vomiting noises in the background.

Eventually, in order to avoid becoming the kind of prick who made everyone else uncomfortable by aggressively snogging in public - or rather, to stop himself from doing it even more, since he sensed he’d already achieved a level of discomfort that he was almost proud of - Louis pulled away and kissed Harry on the cheek. For a moment he breathed in the smell of him, hair fluttering against his face, the sharp smell of nail polish remover and toothpaste, and then he leaned away before he could commit any more heinous public displays of affection and just punched Harry on the arm like he was back in high school and compensating so hard for being gay that every interaction with another guy was practically a wrestling match. Which, when he thought about it, was probably a pretty big tell that he had been gay all along.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

“Yeah, alright, man,” Harry said. “Nice one, bro. See you around, pal.”

Louis pulled a face at him. “Yeah, all right, I know. I can’t get the balance right between bro and babe, sue me. Get on that train, it’s going to leave without you.”

“I love you,” Harry said, and then seemed to realize that Louis wasn’t joking and that the train doors had already slid closed. Alarmed, he seized the one suitcase he hadn’t already loaded on there, sprinted towards the doors, and started pummelling frantically on the glass.

Louis and Niall watched with great amusement as Harry bobbed up and down by the window, frantically gesticulating at the other passengers with one hand, while the other brandished a case the size of a killer whale. Just as Louis was starting to pity him, and was about to go and bang on the door himself to make them open up - Harry was too polite, a few obscene hand gestures would probably do the trick, or else make the train certain to leave without him - someone opened up and Harry dived thankfully on board, dropping his case on their foot in his haste to shake their hand in gratitude. The last Louis saw of him before the door closed, his hands were at his mouth and he was apologising profusely whilst the stranger hopped up and down, bitterly regretting their decision to let him in. Then, the doors slid shut and the train started moving.

Harry whirled around to peer out through the window, spotted Louis watching him, and waved. Already, the train was gathering speed, so that in order to keep up with it, Louis had to go a little faster than a walk to keep up. Without quite meaning to, he found himself jogging after the train, a little breathless already, Harry still waving through the window. Louis chased the train, trying to keep in pace to watch Harry’s delighted grin as he dodged around other people still stood on the platform, weaving through the crowd to keep him in view for as long as possible, and then the platform was beginning to run out, sloping down into the track. The train was gathering speed, the slipstream buffeting him and tossing his hair into his eyes, Louis stumbled and jogged the last few steps and was just in time to see Harry literally push his nose against the glass with a goofy grin, before the train shot past the end of the platform and it was just a metal tail slithering past. Louis stood and watched it chug away, the wires above the track humming slightly, the red tail lights like eyes that watched him right until it turned a corner and out of sight.

Louis felt a little like a lost dog, standing there with his tail wagging while Harry trundled away from him. After a few seconds, when he was beginning to get his breath back, Niall jogged up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Mate,” he said. “You’ve got it bad.”

“Yep,” Louis agreed.

They stood staring after the train for a while, like if Louis squinted hard enough he’d still be able to see Harry at the window, smiling at him. The tracks were laid out in front of him, a silver road to follow, and for a moment he had a strange urge to do just that, to follow the lines and run after him even though he had no hope of catching up. It caught him by surprise, the intensity of the feeling. He’d expected to feel like there was something missing from him, since he and Harry had been joined at the hip for so many weeks, but instead he just felt like he’d forgotten something. Not something important, but something that would keep niggling at him until he’d remembered. Until Harry was back in his arms to remind him.

“Hey,” Niall said. “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

Louis thought about the Harry he’d known and the one he knew now. The fidgeting and the stoop to his shoulders from hunching over a desk, the slight ridiculous laughs that exploded out of him without warning, his chipped nail polish. Watching him shake with anxiety and feeling him shiver with desire. The nuances of all his different smiles and his bad puns. His hair tickling Louis’ cheek.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think he will.”

**THE END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading :D

**Author's Note:**

> I will hopefully be updating every Friday. Please give me feedback, it is the air I breathe. Even if it's negative. (I hope it's not negative.)


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